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It changed the way we looked at small cars almost overnight, and sent the designers scurrying back to the drawing boards - the Mini was little short of a major revolution.

We take a look at the development and subsequent life story of Britain's favourite small car...

Words: Keith Adams, Ian Nicholls

A Brief History of an Icon

he Mini is the car that, more than any other, has changed the face of motoring forever. One cannot imagine a cityscape without a Mini being present, but more significantly, it is impossible to look at a small car today without seeing very real evidence of the influence the Mini has had on it. Back in 1990, a panel of 100 industry experts and commentators voted it the most significant car of the century for Autocar magazine in the UK. This sentiment was reflected by the readership of the magazine who, when polled, also named it the most important car of the century, voting it ahead of such cars as the VW Beetle, Ford Model T and Citroën DS.

But what was the reasoning for such a car to be produced, and by the terribly conservative BMC, of all companies?

Response to a crisis

In a word, the Mini was conceived in response to a crisis: it was created from the situation that erupted in the Middle East in less enlightened times, when the Arabs discovered that they could hold the world to ransom using their control of the majority the world’s oil supplies. The situation blew up in September 1956 when Colonel Nasser decided to nationalise the Suez Canal, which the British did not appreciate one bit. The British and French tried to stop him, the Americans pulled the rug from beneath them and the Arabs decided to close their oil pipeline across the Mediterranean. In the ensuing war, the Arabs blew up the Syrian pipeline that provided 20 per cent of Britain’s petrol supply. The upshot of this was that all oil supplies from the Middle East would need to be transported in giant oil tankers around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, as the Suez Canal was well and truly closed. This resulted in oil shortages and the renewed popularity of small cars in Europe.

Due to the Middle East crisis, petrol rationing returned to the UK in December 1956 and people began to clamour for more economical means of travel. The sales of 900-1000cc cars quadrupled in the period from 1956 to 1957, while car sales in the wider market slumped. German bubble cars began to appear on these shores, and although they may have been awful to drive, with questionable safety, they did achieve more than 40 miles per gallon, which was the most important statistic a car could boast in those petrol-starved times.

One of the earliest sketches for the Mini design as penned by Alec Issigonis. Note how the car changed
remarkably little between concept and production.

The Suez crisis came at a turbulent time in BMC’s history, when the company was grappling with the very real problem of trying to reinvent itself. Alec Issigonis had been working on a front wheel drive Morris Minor replacement, with transverse engine and end-on gearbox, before he was seduced away from the newly-formed BMC in 1952 on the promise of developing a supercar for Alvis Motors. This did not work out for Issigonis, and a call from Leonard Lord at the end of 1955, inviting him back to BMC, could not have come at a better time. Newly back in the fold, Issigonis built a small team of engineers – most notably Jack Daniels, his old associate from the Minor days – and resumed his work for the company.

In a parallel response to Herbert Austin’s disgust at the proliferation of motorcycle/sidecar combinations on UK roads thirty-five years previously, Leonard Lord viewed the popularity of bubble cars with the same distaste. As Lord informed Issigonis in March 1957, “God damn these bloody awful bubble cars. We must drive them off the streets by designing a proper small car”. At this point the emphasis of BMC’s new car development programme was changed from replacing the Minor to producing something new and smaller: a car designated XC9003.

A talented team

One of the first 'Orange Box' prototypes from 1957. (Picture: Ian Nicholls)

Issigonis brought Chris Kingham over from Alvis to join Daniels, and these three men set about defining the Mini. Kingham and Daniels were both extremely gifted engineers who not only made many of Issigonis’ ideas happen, but also helped keep his feet on the ground, without tying him down. The entire team comprised these three, four draftsmen and a brace of student engineers. For project ADO15 (the car’s code name was changed when development was moved to the Austin HQ at Longbridge), there was absolutely no question of this being a high budget affair – and yet the demands that Lord placed on these men were extraordinary.

For Issigonis, the car to emulate and ultimately beat in terms of size and packaging was Dante Giacosa’s FIAT 600 (a modernised version of the famous Cinquecento), for this was a practical four-seater which was contained within a size envelope only slightly larger than that intended for the Mini. The packaging solution employed by FIAT was to place the in-line four-cylinder engine out beyond the back axle and the luggage up-front. At the time, BMC were working on an advanced transverse rear-engined saloon in conjunction with ERA, and it is not inconceivable that this idea was mooted, but this package was not the line of thought that Issigonis wanted to pursue. He saw front wheel drive as the vehicle for his future cars, and the stringent disciplines involved in designing a small car had always fascinated and challenged him. ADO15 would be the first production car to make the point, because he had new ideas that he wished to put into metal.

The three most important figures in the Mini's development and subsequent success: (left to right) John
Cooper, Alec Issigonis and Alex Moulton.

Pulling, not pushing

Issigonis had proved with his work on the original Minor replacement he was working on before his misadventure at Alvis that he could package an engine and gearbox into a space that occupied only two feet of the car’s entire length. He could achieve this by mounting the engine transversely, which would give massive benefits in terms of packaging efficiency, but it created the problem of how the engine and gearbox would be accommodated across the car’s width; as the Mini was intended to be a narrow car, the engine with the gearbox mounted end-on would be very difficult to fit between the wheels, whilst maintaining useful steering lock. One way of shortening the engine/gearbox package was to chop off two cylinders from the A-series engine, creating an in-line, two-cylinder engine of roughly 500cc displacement. The end result was a gutless and rough engine, which was certainly not man enough for the job required.

Just when Issigonis decided to mount the gearbox beneath the engine as part of an in-sump arrangement has now escaped into the mists of time, but this arrangement was incorporated as part of the first Mini mock-up. Not only did it have the now-famous in-sump gearbox, but it also included special Dunlop-developed 10-inch wheels and tyres, Alex Moulton’s rubber suspension and the familiar Mini shape in almost the form in which it was launched, the styling being a scaled down version of the XC9000, a mid-sized Farina replacement that was in the early stages of development.

These three innovations were certainly the making of the Mini, and it is all the more remarkable to note that the conception of the car was such a rapid process: Work on X9003, the original code name for the ADO15 Mini began in March 1957 and by July 1957 the first prototype was running. It was on 19 July 1957 that BMC chairman Leonard Lord and his deputy George Harriman first drove the prototype Mini around the Longbridge complex and the former told Alec Issigonis to 'build the bloody thing.'

The long accepted version of events, The Mini Story by Laurence Pomeroy published in 1964, dated this event as July 1958. Documentary evidence has now emerged to reveal that the decision to push ahead with the ADO15 project was taken a whole year earlier. The first prototype was soon joined by a second car. The two cars, disguised with Austin A35 grilles, were known internally as the 'Orange Boxes' and were based at Cowley for these preliminary trials. The engineers from Morris Motors, Cowley, were headed by Charles Griffin, who would play a significant part in the Mini story and all the later front wheel drive cars that would spring from it.

At night they were thrashed around a well-used test route that Morris test drivers relied on for new car development, taking in a circuitous route through the Cotswolds. During the day, they were driven at the local disused airfield at Chalgrove, circulating around the badly maintained perimeter taxiway. In 500 hours, the cars covered 30,000 miles and this process highlighted weaknesses in the design at that stage. It was at motor show time in October 1957 that BMC's joint managing director George Harriman teased journalists, telling them that the corporations market researchers had discovered that consumers did not want bubble cars, but a low priced, fully engineered car. He was quoted as saying, 'Obviously if the corporation can produce such a car which will sell more cheaply, they will do so.'

Someone literally took a chainsaw to a Mini to produce this, but it shows very eloquently just how
efficiently packaged it really is. The passenger area accounted for an unprecedented 60% of the car’s
length, a tribute to the intelligent design.

From the airing of the first prototype, to the car’s launch in August 1959, only a few major mechanical changes were made; a reduction in engine size from 948cc to 848cc was ordered as a direct result of the fact that early prototypes had been clocked at over 92 mph, which was considered far too fast for the market the Mini was aimed at. The new capacity was arrived at by reducing the stroke from 73mm in the 948cc version to 68mm in the final 848cc incarnation.

Last minute changes

At this time, the engine was rotated through 180 degrees to face the bulkhead, so that the carburettor was now to the rear of the engine, instead of at the front, where it tended to ice up in cold conditions. According to John Cooper, the real reason why the engine was reversed, however, was that Mini prototypes kept destroying their synchromeshes after about 100 miles. Issigonis was reportedly very upset that this change was required because the car was faster in its original form. Why the engine was rotated, rather than Austin designing a more durable synchomesh can be put down to two factors: time and money - or more correctly, the lack of it. So, carburettor icing was cited as the reason for this reversal of the position of the engine, but the response of John Cooper to this suggestion was that it, 'was a load of bull!'

Interestingly, the whole point of the re-orientation and the resultant introduction of the transfer gears was to allow for much smaller gears, which produced much less inertia, meaning that there would be less stress on the gearbox’s synchromesh. Testing had shown that even with this fundamental alteration, the Austin A35 synchromesh would not be up to the job, but because the development of the Porsche baulk ring Synchro would not be complete by the planned launch date, they went ahead with the A35 system, anyway!

Another myth perpetuated by Laurence Pomeroy was that the width of the car was increased by two inches, in order to improve accommodation for passengers and engine alike. In fact two inches was taken out of the rear track for purely aesthetic reasons. It was also found as a result of all that flogging round Chalgrove that the body shell around the suspension mounting points was breaking. This led to the suspension being changed so that the rubber units would be mounted on their own subframes, front and rear, in order to lessen stresses on the structure, at the expense of weight and cost.

Wheel size was an ongoing issue at the time and when the Mini finally appeared, few critics saw the significance of this new, smaller design of road wheel – most were convinced that they could not work. Issigonis had furthered the development of the small car by working with Dunlop to produce a road tyre of record-breaking diminutiveness, a process that he had begun with the Morris Minor. At that time, the Minor had the smallest tyres of any volume production car – when Giacosa had conceived the FIAT 500, for example, he had asked Pirelli to produce special tyres to fit on 15in wheel rims. The industry average at the time was a much larger 16 or 17in rim size.

The question of wheel size was very important because the smaller the wheel, the smaller the wheel arch, meaning less intrusion into the passenger compartment. At the start of the Mini project, Issigonis had approached Dunlop, as he had done with the Minor, to develop a new type of tyre that would sit on a wheel that was 4.20 x 10in – almost wheelbarrow dimensions – and Dunlop managed to develop a suitable tyre for the car. The tyres that finally appeared on the Mini were 5.20 inches in width, rather wider than the prototypes’ 4.80 inch tyres, and it was as a direct result of the car’s unexpectedly good performance that this change was made.

1959 Morris Mini-Minor: pure, unspoiled Mini. Along with the Austin Se7en, this car caused an absolute
sensation when launched during August 1959. People took a long time to latch on to the fact that
something so small could accommodate four fully-grown adults and their luggage.

As with all of the next two generations of the corporation’s cars, Alex Moulton was responsible for suspension system. In the Mini, he designed all-new rubber suspension units to replace the spring units that were employed in conventionally suspended cars. Moulton made great use of the variable rate properties provided by using rubber as a springing medium – the advantage being that in a small car, the weight difference between fully-laden and driver-only was proportionally greater than it would be in a larger, heavier car. These rubber cones were smaller than conventional spring/damper units, which meant that Moulton’s system also had significant packaging advantages.

By March 1958 the first two X9003 prototypes had amassed 50,000 miles apiece and the decision was taken to build ten pilot production cars, each differing in detail to the previous example as the design evolved. The ADO15 Mini proved to be a difficult design to productionise and this was a cause of friction between the production engineers and Alec Issigonis. Indeed as early as October 1958 development engineers were having trouble with water leaks and persuading Issigonis to modify his design was proving problematical.

So, was 621 AOK the first Mini?

The exact chronology of Mini production has been distorted through the passage of time which has resulted in a series of half truths becoming the accepted story. For a long time it has been accepted that 621 AOK, now at the BMH Gaydon museum, was the first production Mini. The truth is as follows. The first production Mini with the chassis number 101 was an Austin Mini Seven built at Longbridge on April 3rd 1959. 101 Has long since disappeared into the great scrapyard in the sky, but 102 built the same day amazingly survives. Registered 627 HUE, in 1965 this car was bought by Donald Healey and transformed into a convertible two seater, apparently with the blessing of Alec Issigonis. 627 HUE is now owned by a Japanese Mini collector. Both Mini's 101 and 102/627 HUE were delivered to one Alec Issigonis. The initial Austin production was as follows. Austin chassis 103 also survives, registered KEG 77, it was exported to Japan in 1996.

Austin 101 and 102 built 3 April
Austin 103 and 104 built 4 May
Austin 105 built 5 May

It was on 8 May 1959 that Mini production began at Cowley when Morris chassis numbers 101,102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112 were all built. Bizarrely 104 and 109 were built a few days later. Morris Mini Minor chassis 101 was registered as 621 AOK. So why the confusion ? One can only assume that in February 1965, when the millionth Mini was produced in the aftermath of the second Monte Carlo rally win, that BMC's PR machine simply made the understandable mistake of assuming Morris 101/621 AOK was the first car of all and it and Alec Issigonis posed outside Longbridge with a 1965 model for PR photographs that have appeared in the printed media ever since. In fact Morris 101/621 AOK was the sixth production Mini. By the time the error was realised it was too late to backtrack and Morris 101/621 AOK has now become the official first Mini.

By June, 100 cars a day were being built, in order to build up dealer stocks in preparation for the launch in August. In total, the gestation of this car from the instigation of the ADO15 project to its launch was two years and five months. This achievement was all the more remarkable when one considers that the Mini did not follow any other car’s design concepts and was a totally new idea that was implemented in a totally new way.

The first public admission that something new was on the way came on the 17th June 1959, when BMC chairman Sir Leonard Lord revealed some details of the forthcoming cars. He stated that these cars had been through extensive trials and had taken three years to develop. New buildings had been erected and new plant and equipment using the most up-to-date methods installed at a total cost of well over £10m. At the same time it was also revealed that the Austin A40 and Morris Minor would remain in production.

Those who think that industrial action was something that resulted as a consequence of the formation of British Leyland will be surprised to read that the situation in the UK car industry in 1959 was as bad as anything that occurred in the 1970s. 1959 Was a terrible year for strikes. The launch of the Mini was endangered by industrial action at the Morris Motors plant at Cowley, where on 15th July 1959, BMC dismissed Mr Frank Horsman, senior shop steward at the factory. Cowley was soon brought to a halt by strike action in a scenario similar to that of two decades later involving Derek Robinson and Longbridge, and it was August 13th before normal working resumed. With launch of the Mini only 13 days away, it was a close run thing.

1959: Mini is launched

Issigonis and the Mini at its launch in August 1959.

When the press first got their hands on BMC’s new car on the 18th and 19th August 1959 at Chobham in Surrey, they were not shy to praise it; the Mini’s unique personality, exceptional space efficiency, relatively good performance and tenacious front-wheel-drive handling meant that it was a sure fire hit with the critics. It swept aside the conservatism that was rife in the corporation and the perception of BMC in the public’s eye was changed indelibly.

Launch day itself was the 26 August 1959. This was also the day that the car the Mini was replacing, the Austin A35, went out of production. Perhaps this was because launch day had been brought forward from the 2 September at the last minute. Because BMC had separate dealerships for its component companies, there were two different variants of the ADO15 at launch, the Austin Se7en and the Morris Mini Minor The initial production target was 3000 vehicles a week, divided equally between the Longbridge and Cowley plants. The Fisher and Ludlow plant was already geared to produce 4,000 bodies a week. Preliminary plans had been made for the cars to be constructed by the Innocenti firm in Milan. Some 2000 of the new cars had already been sent abroad and they were displayed in motor showrooms in nearly 100 countries.

And by the 1st September 1959, the first stoppage had occurred; the first of many in the cars lifetime. On the 23rd November 1959, BMC announced a £49m expansion plan and stated to shareholders that the planned output of 4000 Minis a week had already become insufficient. It was taking steps immediately to double this output to 8000 a week, and by the end of 1959, 19,749 Minis had been produced.

The word 'mini' is now an everyday part of the english vocabulary, but was it in regular use before the ADO15 arrived on the scene, and who came up with the name 'Mini' for the car? One assumes 'Mini' is a shortened version of either 'minimum' or 'minature'? Between 1948 and 1966, Bond built the three wheel Minicar with a motorcycle engine, so BMC were not the originators of the word 'Mini'. According to Thirty Mini Years, the 1989 official Rover souvenir booklet to mark the car's 30th birthday, it was none other than Lord Nuffield, BMC's Honoury President who pushed for the adoption of the name 'Mini'.

Lord Nuffield, who allegedly always referred to Issigonis as 'that foreign chap' was quoted as saying, 'I have a hunch that "Mini" may well prove to be the catchword of the next decade.'

Of course the other issue with the Mini that must be addressed is whether it made or lost money for its maker. The price for the base model of the world's most advanced family car was £496.95 - astonishingly low. According to some historians, Austin had based the pricing of its cars in the pre-BMC era by mirroring what Morris charged. Austin supremo Leonard Lord believed that William Morris was the master in cost control and simply assumed that Longbridge's cars cost a similar amount to manufacture. With the formation of BMC, the corporation now looked at Ford for its pricing policy. It appears that BMC simply decided to sell its new baby at a similar price to the sit-up-and-beg Ford Popular, which ceased production in 1959.

In an interview with Jonathan Wood for his book Alec Issigonis: The Man Who Made The Mini, former BMC executive Geoffrey Rose stated: 'George Harriman (BMC deputy chairman in 1959) would have decided the Mini's price and one of the key figures in the decision was Harry Williams, a cost accountant... Both Len Lord and George Harriman thought to some extent "volume will deal with it". It's on the basis that you make cars all the week until Thursday afternoon and Friday is when all the overheads have been covered and you make the profit. Sad to say, it came down to the sheer arrogance of 'we're BMC, we know what we're doing'. But Alec (Issigonis) would have been completely outside the pricing process. In some board meetings that I attended I used to have to help him through the balance sheet, through the figures.'

The launch of the Mini had upstaged Ford's own debutante, the Anglia 105E, and both cars were aimed at the same market sector. The base Mini compared with the £589 - the Dagenham product costing a whopping £93 more. How could BMC do it undercut the Anglia so handsomely?

One of the criticisms of BMC by armchair pundits is that it had too many plants spread out over the country. The production of the Mini perfectly illustrates this. The A-series engines came from Morris Engines at Courthouse Green, Coventry, the front wheel drive transmission came from both Longbridge and Drews Lane, also in Birmingham. The components for Cowley had to be transported from the Coventry and Birmingham areas all the way to Oxford. Body pressings came from the Fisher and Ludlow plant at Llanelli in Wales, one of many factories that the motor industry had been forced to build in areas of high unemployment by the MacMillan government, far away from the midlands. These pressing were then taken to two locations in Birmingham for assembly into bodyshells, the Fisher and Ludlow plant at Castle Bromwich and the West Works at Longbridge.

Minimalistic interior: although this is a 1967 Morris Mini Cooper 'S' MkII, it is still an extremely functional design. This Mini received a remote gearchange and more comprehensive instumentation over the original. Note the sliding windows and huge door-bins - made obsolete a year later by the later wind-up-windows Minis (known as the ADO20).

In its first year of production, the Mini overtook the Morris Minor as the corporation’s bestseller, but it was not all plain sailing for the Issigonis box. The initial problem, as far as UK sales were concerned, was that the Mini was considered too clever and too small for the typical customer that Leonard Lord had designed the car for. Many buyers were from the “blue collar” end of the social spectrum and adjudged the Mini as not for them – how could a car so small have room for them and their families? This response reflects the age-old buyer’s attitude that size is equal to status, and many decided that for the same money they could buy the larger and simpler Ford 100E Popular or Austin A40. No matter that Ford’s runabout was no roomier, had far poorer road-holding and was slower – it was a known quantity to the man in the street.

The other setback for the Mini was that as a car with an accelerated development programme, its reliability was somewhat questionable, and there were some design flaws that became apparent very quickly. The most famous of these early teething troubles was what was known back then as the “great floating carpet epic”. If driven in the rain, the carpets would soon emit a musty odour, which coupled with the squelching sounds they made when one stood on them, meant only one thing: water ingress. The engineers grappled with this problem for some time before the cause was traced to the late addition of a reinforcing box sill to the outer edge of the body, through which water was trickling. What made this all the more painful for BMC was that the only solution to the problem was an expensive re-design of the floorpan.

Mini landmarks By December 1962, half a million Minis had been built By 1965, that had doubled to one million... ...and in 1969, that had doubled again. The expressions on George Turnbull's (left) and Alec Issigonis' faces tell us all we need to know... Lord Stokes celebrating the three millionth Mini off the line, 25th October 1972... Sue Cuff was on hand to see off the four millionth Mini in 1976.   And in 1986, the five millionth Mini had been produced - Noel Edmonds saw it off the line.

Other problems included internal oil leaks that sprayed the clutch plate; a mis-specified synchromesh that resulted in crunchy gear changes; exposed plugs and distributor at the front of the engine, which had Minis spluttering to a halt in the rain – water again! Not to mention a floor mounted starter switch that would also get a soaking, with predictable results. So, the early customers were acting as unpaid development engineers for BMC, and it was lucky for the corporation that the Mini’s design was so intrinsically right that these early setbacks did not push the car under and result in BMC reverting to the production of stolid and uninspiring cars.

All these problems were eventually licked, but it did mean that sales were slower to pick up than Leonard Lord had first expected.

1960: expansion

In January 1960, the Mini Van was launched - and on the 18th of that month, 800 workers began a night shift at Cowley to boost production of the Mini. On the 16th September, BMC announced two new estate car versions of the Mini, the Morris Mini Traveller and the Austin Seven Countryman. Both these cars featured an external wooden frame, but unlike other BMC estates, these were for decoration and were not structural. The autumn of 1960 was blighted by a series of industrial disputes as BMC tried to ramp up Mini production. Then, due to a recession in the motor trade BMC were forced to put 23,500 men on short time working, but the Mini was unaffected as demand for the car increased. Weekly production at the time was 3000.

1960 Was the year the Mini really took off, some 116,677 leaving the factories and already selling better than the Austin A35 at its peak. The success of the ADO15 soon brought it to the attention of Ford UK's senior product planner, a native of Walsall, Terry Beckett.

He later commented: 'We were very frustrated from 1959 onwards with the advent of the Mini. This was in view of the fact that historically, since the mid-'30s and the Ford £100 car, we had pre-eminence in that sector of the market by offering the lowest priced car which we coupled with value for money service. I can remember in one month in 1960, the Mini achieved a 19 per cent market penetration. That was just one model'.

One of the legends about the Mini is how Ford bought an example and took it apart down to the spot welds to see how BMC could sell it for such a low price. Although it has never been stated whether the car they took apart was the basic or De Luxe model. Terry Beckett recalled: 'We then determined how much it would cost us to build it. On our cost analysis, which we thought was ahead of theirs, we really didn't see how the car could be produced in this way to make a profit.'

According to Beckett, Ford calculated that BMC was losing £30 on every Mini it made. He added: 'I could see ways in which we could take cost out of the Mini without in any way reducing its sales appeal... BMC could have priced it at £30 more, and not lost any sales at all. You can track the decline of BMC from that single product: it took up a huge ammount of resources, it sterilised cash flow and it was a pretty disasterous venture'.

Strong words indeed, but Terry Beckett became one of British industry's most outstanding executives, ultimately becoming the chairman of Ford of Britain, and head of the CBI. Beckett revealed that Ford of Britain did come under pressure from dealers, customers, fleet owners and above all the parent company in Detroit to respond to the Mini. 'The great thing was that the Mini was a fine piece of innovative engineering and there we were with very conventional motor cars,' Just to ensure that Ford UK had got their sums right, another Mini was taken to the companies product planning headquarters at Aveley in Essex and stripped down to the last nut and bolt.

'...and we arrived at the same results we had acheived in the first place,' commented Sir Terence Beckett.

Ford could now relax, they had proved that if they tackled the Mini head on in the marketplace, they could only do so by making a loss themselves. The major back-story of the car sales wars of the 1960s would be Beckett's marketing brilliance versus Issigonis' engineering genius. And in 1976 Ford overtook British Leyland as Britains favourite vendor of automobiles. One of Terence Beckett's team was the late Alex Trotman, who rose even higher, heading Ford worldwide and gaining a peerage in the process. In a television interview, he recalled that the Mini cost around the same as the Anglia to manufacture - and Ford was making £50 profit car. In Ford's opinion, the Mini cost around £539 to build, a similar figure to the list price of the De Luxe. By September, 1960 BMC was claiming that weekly Mini production had now reached 3300.

1961: race on Sunday, sell on Monday...

In January 1961 the Mini Pick Up arrived on the market. However the Mini's immunity to the recession ended and production was now down to 2000 cars a week, although this was still higher than most British cars at the time. By February business had picked up and it was soon back to normal. BMC's Australian subsiduary began producing Minis in March 1961, known locally as the Morris 850. The antipodean Mini was produced at BMC Australia's Zetland plant in a suburb of Sydney. In BMC's annual report for 1960-61, the company stated that Mini production had risen by 62 per cent in the period, despite an overall drop in production for all vehicles of 10 per cent.

The Riley Elf (along with its brother, the Wolseley Hornet) was the first of two attempts (the second,
being the Clubman, pictured below) to extend the Mini concept by lengthening it: the structural
modifications to the Mini were all aft of the B-pillar, where out back a saloon-type boot was added. One
advantage of the Riley (and Wolseley) front-end treatment, was the full-depth radiator grille, which allowed
for improved under-bonnet access when compared with the standard item.

Be that as it may, while the average man in the street remained largely ignorant of the Mini’s strong points, other people began to notice them – most notably John Cooper. Cooper was aware of the car’s basic strengths, as both his Formula One drivers, Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren drove and raved about Minis, and Cooper himself knew all about the tuning potential of the A-series engine following his experiences with it in his Formula Junior cars. Cooper made tentative approaches to Issigonis in 1960, selling the idea of a high performance variation of the Mini, but Sir Alec was still harbouring a dream that his Mini was a car for everyman and as such was not that keen on it being seen as a performance car. Such was Cooper’s persistence that he ended up going over his colleague Issigonis’ head and straight to George Harriman, explaining the advantages of his idea. After a brief meeting Harriman told John Cooper to go away and build the car, but as Cooper later recalled with one proviso: 'Harriman said that we had to make 1000 – but we eventually made 150,000!'

The Mini Cooper, launched on the 20th September 1961, eventually went on to become part of motoring folklore, amassing countless rally wins, particularly in the Monte Carlo, where the Cooper performed remarkable feats of giant killing. On the road, the Mini Cooper was also a remarkable success, becoming the performance car for a generation; but considering the car was such a success, it seems all the more sad that the BMC-Cooper arrangement was never made official, and John Cooper only earned a £2 royalty payment (plus reasonably healthy retainer) for the use of his name on each one sold. However, on the back of the success of the Cooper models, and the countless celebrity endorsements, the rest of the range received a shot in the arm in terms of sales success.

Curiously the Mini Cooper received a new internal project code, ADO50, while other versions of the ADO15 platform which had more substantial differences, such as the commercial variants remained ADO15's. For a fuller description of events, see the separate development story. 12 October 1961 saw the announcement of two more variations on the Mini theme, the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet. These were the posh Mini's with Riley the slightly more upmarket.

According to LJK Setright they were designed, '...to appeal to those small minded snobs who found the idea of a Mini intriguing but the name of Austin or Morris offensive and the evidence of austerity.' Jeff Daniels wrote, in 1980, harshly of the cars. 'The Wolseley Hornet and Riley Elf are awful reminders of what happened when every BMC dealer and marque manager demanded his version of the Mini.'

The Elf/Hornet employed an extended boot and vertical fins. At the front they both had a vertical grille and wood trim in the interior as well as more chrome than the standard Mini's. Of course when Jeff Daniels wrote his words, the Rover badge adorned the imposing five door Rover SD1 executive car and the Austin Metro was about to launched. He couldn't have possibly imagined a Rover badged Metro...

Some journalists were just as harsh when the cars were current. Small Car magazine, soon to morph into CAR wrote: 'We guess it's no exaggeration to say that the first Issigonis Wolseley Hornet was among the ugliest, most uncomfortable and least desirable cars ever offered to the great British public. At any rate the one we tested in the winter of 1962 so disappointed us we couldn't bring ourselves to write a word about it.'

Alec Issigonis seems to have distanced himself from these models and delegated development to the engineers working under him and BMC's senior stylist, the Argentinian born Dick Burzi. The Elf/Hornets were shamelessly aimed at women drivers as a sort of minuturised Jaguar or Rover and seemed to epitomise the kind of Britain that was fading away as the 1960s progressed. Also in the Autumn of 1961 BMC introduced stronger steel wheels on the Mini. This was in response the the racing fraternities experience of shattering wheels under extreme cornering.

On 7 November 1961, the first of many corporate changes occurred in the Mini's lifespan when Sir Leonard Lord retired to be replaced as chairman of BMC by Sir George Harriman and on the 13th November, Alec Issigonis was appointed BMC Technical Director. This was followed by the appointment of Charles Griffin as Chief Engineer, Cars. By now Alec Issigonis had divided BMC's engineering staff into three cells. Cell A was responsible for the continuing development of the Mini, and was headed by Jack Daniels. Cell B worked on the project known as the ADO17 and was led by Chris Kingham. Cell C worked on the forthcoming ADO16, and was led by the aforementioned Charles Griffin. From 1962, the Austin Seven was renamed the Austin Mini.

1962

On the 15th August 1962, the ADO16 was announced as the Morris 1100, and later in every conceivable BMC guise. With a 1098cc A-Series engine, Pininfarina styling and Alex Moulton's Hydrolastic suspension, the ADO16 was a more refined, larger, roomier supermini, before the term was coined. The ADO16 was an instant hit and would remain Britain's best selling car for a decade. The ADO16 would form a partnership with the Mini that would span the globe and attain the zenith of the British motor industry. Unfortunately only 10 per cent of parts were common to both vehicles.

On the 21st September, Ford's impeccably-costed Cortina was launched. Even the steering wheel had been re-designed four times to bring it in under budget. Now the four cars that would define the 1960s in automotive terms, were all on the market, the Mini, the Jaguar E-type, the BMC 1100 and the Ford Cortina. A sign that perhaps the Mini was underpriced was printed by The Times on the 23 November: 'British Motor Corporation's Mini range has certainly proved a success so far as sales are concerned, but the competitive pricing has bitten deeply into profit margins.

'Mr George Harriman now reveals in his statement that the £5m plus fall in profits to £11.5m was based on a turnover of £311m, almost exactly the same level as in the previous year. Last year 60 per cent of the group's total output was represented by products of under 1000cc. This compares with 57 per cent for the previous year, and only 43 per cent five years ago. Clearly this trend, plus the narrow margins, makes it essential to maintain turnover by expanding output. In the last trading period the output of Minis reached 182,864 units, of which the home market absorbed 125,877. Exports are; however, increasing steadily and in the last three months of the financial year were averaging 1308 a week.'

During the life of the Mk1 Mini, BMC did make an effort to reduce manufacturing costs, although, no pun intended, the savings were miniscule. It can't have helped that there were allegedly 48 different makes of carpet for the car. Fortunately by now demand for the basic Mini had now dropped to 9 per cent of production.

1963: the range expands across the globe

In October 1962 the Mini Cooper was also launched in Australia, while back in the UK an all metal version of the Countryman and Traveller estates was launched which retailed at a lower price than the wood framed models. The winter of 1962/63 was cold and bitter, and outside Longbridge in the snow on the 7 January 1963, Alec Issigonis and Charles Griffin demonstrated the prototype twin engined Mini Moke to the media. Even Norman Wisdom was in attendance. However it would be another year before the Moke went into production. Also in January 1963 BMC announced Mk2 versions of the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet featuring a single carburettor 998cc engine, the first type of Mini to use what eventually became the mainstream unit.

On the 2nd April 1963, the Mini Cooper 1071S was announced, followed by the news on April 19th that Alec Issigonis, the BMC Technical Director had been appointed to the main board. On May 7th it was revealed that weekly Mini production had reached 5500. In its November 25th 1963 edition the Times reported, 'BMC's net profit on each Mini has been little more than £5, and their market outside Europe has been negligible.'

The Mini's most successful year as far as UK sales was early on in the cars life span. 134,346 Were sold in Britain in 1963, followed by 123,429 in 1964. It never came close to matching these figures again.

1964: Monte magic

On January 23rd 1964, things really started to come together for the Mini when Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon won the Monte Carlo Rally in Mini Cooper 1071S 33 EJB. The returning car was given a heroes welcome by the media. One of the world's premier motorsport events had been won by a low budget small car that looked like something a district nurse would drive, or so BMC's PR men would have you believe. In reality the Cooper S Minis cost a bit more than the basic 850.

In the aftermath of the Monte Carlo win, Alec Issigonis said: 'The amazing point is that I planned the ADO15 not as a competition car but as family transport. But I think that when exceptional drivers get hold of the car, they can exploit its steering, suspension and roadholding-all of which I felt were important for a family car.' The motor sport success of the Mini created a whole go faster and accessories industry, ranging from the likes of Downton Engineering to back street bodgers as owners of even 850 cars craved more get up and go. The cars go-kart handling and low ride height made the driver feel like they were in a racing car, even if in reality there was a limitation to performance from the 848 cc engine. Also in January 1964, production of the Mini Moke began, but it was not available in Britain until August of that year.

In February 1964, BMC announced it had built one million front wheel drive vehicles. BMC said that 1,002,129 had been produced, including 782,838 Austin and Morris Minis and 219,291 Morris, MG, and Austin 1100s. Of the total, 325,441 or 32.5 per cent-were exported. BMC was producing 11,350 Issigonis-designed front-wheel-drive models a week, with demand still exceeding production and being further increased.

In March, BMC announced they would be launching two more Mini variants at the forthcoming Geneva Motor Show. They were the Cooper 970S and 1275S. Although the Mini developed the image as a peoples car, the purchaser needed to be in a different income bracket to afford the 1275S. In September 1964, the basic Morris Mini Minor cost £449, which didn't get you a heater. The Morris Mini Cooper 1275S cost £757, a whopping 68 per cent more. By June, the US army was reported to be evaluating the Mini Moke, but the trials came to nothing. In September, BMC revealed details to the press about the new Hydrolastic Minis. Hydrolastic was to be fitted to the mainstream Minis to give that big car ride, or so BMC believed its potential customers thought.

The fitment of Hydrolastic suspension to the Mini was and is controversial. Did it improve the car, or was it a costly diversion? Certainly many BMC engineers felt it was not worth the effort on a car which had dubious profitability. Hydrolastic appeared to improve the ride of the Mini, but impaired the handling. Also BMC engineers allegedly altered Alex Moulton's suspension settings.

1965

In January 1965 the Mini Cooper 1275S AJB 44B of Timo Makinen and Paul Easter won the Monte Carlo Rally. Alec Issigonis, speaking after the event said: 'Racing, while valuable in spectacle and publicity, I am certain, does not improve the breed.'

He then added: 'But rallying does, because it is so closely allied to road use. It forces development. It tends to exaggerate many mechanical features, to underline weaknesses. It is directly through rally expenence that we have strengthened our gearboxes enormously.' Had the Mini's competition work directly influenced his designs? 'I do not know. We used to think that if you had very good engine breathing it gave no low-speed torque. But this kind of rallying shows that you can have both. I would say the influence of rally work is quite subtle. But, given these conditions of ice and snow, we see the Mini could not be a more suitable engineering package, enabling us to take on the five or seven litre cars, which we cannot do on the race track. Even so, it was not designed as a competition car.'

During May 1965, the UK production of the Mini attained its highest weekly production figure, when both Cowley and Longbridge produced 5000 cars. On the 22nd July, BMC announced it was taking over the Pressed Steel Company, the Oxford based car body manufacturer, for £34m. Then on August 6th BMC announced it would be producing some of its vehicles at a plant at Seneffe in southern Belgium. This enabled the company to circumvent tariffis on imported non-European Union vehicles. In October 1965, the Italian firm of Innocenti began to licence build its own version of the Mini, known as the Innocenti Mini Minor 850 at its factory in Milan. At 860,000 lire, the Innocenti Mini Minor 850 was quite a bit more expensive than the rival Fiat 850, but as the Milan firm was to be an extremely profitable operation, it is quite possible that unlike BMC, the Italians had thoroughly costed the price of Mini manufacture.

In October, BMC announced the automatic transmission Mini and 1100. The all-British system was designed by the Automotive Products Group and developed with BMC over the previous 18 months, the joint investment amounting to £3m. It was the first marriage of an automatic transmission to a transverse engine - achieved by putting it in the sump - and the world's smallest automatic with a torque converter replacing the clutch. By then, UK Mini and 1100 production was recorded as running at 11,000 to 12,000 a week.

1965 Was a year of significant developments for the Australian Mini. In May 1965 the Mini Van was introduced down under and in June the Morris 850 was renamed the Morris Mini Minor, in line with the Cowley built cars. In September 1965 the 1275 cc Cooper S joined the Antipodean range. The most interesting development was the introduction of wind-up windows to all Australian Minis; a luxury that European buyers would have to wait for.

1966: production changes

January 1966 arrived and the works Minis were disqualified from the Monte Carlo Rally for headlight infringements. Once again Timo Makinen and Paul Easter finished first on the road. BMC exploited the furore over the disqualification to its advantage. In February, Moke production began in Australia. There were more corporate changes in June 1966, when Joe Edwards, boss of the newly absorbed Pressed Steel Company, was appointed managing director of BMC; while Sir George Harriman remained chairman.

BMC had started to drift aimlessly with disappointing financial results; and it was Joe Edwards' task to restore it to health. This was followed on July 11th 1966 by the merger of BMC and Sir William Lyons Jaguar group of companies to form British Motor Holdings (BMH). This was effectively a takeover of Jaguar by BMC, with Sir George Harriman remaining chairman. At about the same time, the newly re-elected Labour government imposed some deflationary measures on the economy, resulting in a slow down in the new car trade. By November 1966, BMC had announced plans to make 10,000 workers redundant, as part of Joe Edwards' plan to reduce overmanning, and had put over 20,000 more on short-time working. This sparked off protest strikes, but the most serious was a strike by delivery drivers, which resulted in BMC plants becoming overcrowded with new cars to such an extent that the company was forced to shut down all production. The media had a field day, publishing photographs of disused airfields overcrowded with cars that could not be delivered to dealers. Although the various disputes were resolved by December, the ramifications of what for BMC was an embarrassing period, was far reaching.

While BMC was losing face in public, and market share, it also announced another revision to the Mini range in October 1966. The Wolseley Hornet and Riley Elf went into Mk3 guise with wind-up windows and internal door hinges.

1967

Soon it was January 1967 and Monte Carlo Rally time. Rauno Aaltonen and Henry Liddon swept to victory in Cooper 1275S LBL 6D, and this time it was official. The Times quoted Alec Issigonis at the Geneva Motor Show in March saying of the Mini: 'In a four-seater of that size there is no room for styling.' However on the 13th April 1967, British Motor Holdings declared it had lost £7.5m in the six months to January 1967. This represented an adverse swing of £13m in pre-tax profit. Although there had been mitigating circumstances for this big loss - the problems of 1966 were a major factor - the government became convinced that BMH, or at least the BMC component, was going to hit the rocks. From then, on the Wilson government actively encouraged a merger between BMH and Sir Donald Stokes Leyland Motor Corporation.

While all this was going on BMC began, rather late in the day, to investigate a facelift, which went on to become the Mk2 Mini. The Motor Show of October 1967 brought the arrival of the Mk2 Austin and Morris Mini, as announced on the 17th October; and from there on, there was no Mini Minor nomenclature. The revised car featured a larger rear window, near rear light clusters, and a restyled grille, which was probably intended to give the Mini a family resemblance to the other Issigonis front wheel drive cars. In truth, the new grille was probably more time consuming to fit on the production line than the Mk1 moustache surround and grille. The Austin and Morris each had alternate grilles, although there does seem to have been more of an effort to commonise parts. The Mk2 models also offered the 998 cc engine, previously found in the Elf/Hornet models. From now on the familiar Mini 850 and 1000 appeared in the BMC range.

But because the design of the facelifted model had not been started until March 1967, BMC's component suppliers could not supply the new grille and tail lamps in adequate numbers - if at all. BMC ended up storing 22,000 incomplete cars, again this was reported in the media. There was also a shortage of the 998 cc A-series engine, which now that it was fitted to the mainstream Mini was expected to prove the most popular power unit. And these shortages were to endure for at least four months. This apparent mis-management and administrative chaos further played into the hands of the Wilson government who saw the Leyland Motor Corporation as the saviours of the British owned motor industry.

On 19 October, BMC announced that Roy Haynes, Ford of Britain's chief stylist who shaped the Mk2 Cortina and MkIV Zephyr/Zodiac, was to become BMC's director of styling. Haynes was also trained as a product planner and was recruited as part of Joe Edwards' plan to rejuvenate BMC. And the Mini would feature on Haynes list of things to do.

Some time between 1965 and 1967, the concept that BMC was not making money on Mini began to seep into the minds of the company's senior executives. Production engineer Peter Tothill, quoted in Jonathan Wood's book, Alec Issigonis: The Man Who Made The Mini, recalled a meeting at Longbridge: 'They'd come to realise the massive cost penalty being incurred by the Mini. A cost comparison was done between it, the (Austin) A40 and the (Morris) Minor and all the bits were laid out to see if any parts could be commonised. If, for instance, we used the same sun visor we'd save half a penny a visor. The trouble was the Mini was over-engineered, there was so much cost built into the car with, for example, a penalty of £20 to £25 on the sub frames and suspension. Because it worked at a ratio of 5 to 1 you've got forged arms instead of pressings and ball and roller bearings for the pivots.'

1968: the big year

As part of Joe Edwards rationalisation plan, production of the Mini ceased at Cowley in January 1968, thus eliminating the transportation costs from Morris engines and Castle Bromwich. From now on all UK production of the Mini would be at Longbridge. Following the formation of British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC), the BMC directors' zones of responsibility were reshuffled - mainly because of Alec Issigonis' decision to devote himself full-time to more creative and forward looking concepts of research and development. This was when Issigonis decided to design a new Mini, the project that became the 9X.

Tensions between BMH and Leyland executives resulted in Joe Edwards resigning from BLMC, leaving the old BMC effectively under Leyland's control. The BLMC officially came into existence on the 14th May 1968 with Sir George Harriman as chairman and Sir Donald Stokes as chief executive. Harriman had in reality agreed to stand down after a few months, while Stokes temporarily took over running the former BMC. He drafted in Harry Webster, Triumph's technical director, to take over the equivalent post at Longbridge, usurping Issigonis, who was sidelined into research and development.

While these corporate moves were taking place, while Issigonis was working away on the 9X, at his styling studio at Cowley, Roy Haynes and his team were beavering away on the Mk3 Mini and Clubman. On the 30th May, a camera recorded for posterity a Mini Clubman hatchback. Sadly money for development projects was now hard to come by, and money, or lack of it would now dictate British Leyland's small car policy.

On 17 September, Sir Donald Stokes replaced Sir George Harriman as chairman of BLMC. George Turnbull was imported from running Triumph to become the managing director of the Austin Morris division. Also that month all the Mini models now recieved an all synchromesh gearbox. Graham Turner in his book The Leyland Papers claimed that in 1968 the Mini was making a profit of £15 per unit, although the method of calculating this was later disputed. In October, the Authi factory at Pamplona in Spain produced its first Mini, a car known as the 1275C. Further models followed in 1969; the 1000E and 1000S models. In the same month, UK production of the Moke ceased. It was not a car suitable for the British climate, and production would now centre on sunnier climes.

During 1968 Alec Issigonis calculated that an inline rear wheel drive 1275cc engine and gearbox cost just over £42, but the transverse equivalent cost around £54. And there were more expensive add-ons as a consequence of this. All this was not lost on Roy Haynes, who although was working on the Mini Clubman, was not a fan of Issigonis' baby. He and other Ford imports like product planner John Bacchus saw it as an expensive, unprofitable financial disaster. Perhaps a legacy of Terry Beckett's disection and costing of a Mini soon after its launch? Within days of the official formation of British Leyland in May 1968, Roy Haynes had written to the companies Finance Director John Barber, another Ford import, advocating the development of a simple, profitable rear wheel drive car to appeal to the fleet market. This became the Morris Marina.

1969: Mark 3 and Clubman arrives

Development by marketing: how not to improve the Mini in two easy steps. Graft on a Maxi front end and
replace the cult performance Cooper models with a de-tuned version. The Clubman was soon nicknamed
the “Clubfoot” by Mini aficionados.

On 19 June 1969 the two millionth Mini rolled off the production line at Longbridge, the first British car to attain this mark. Sir Alec Issigonis, as he now was, was there posing with Austin Morris managing director George Turnbull, who in a advance press release stated: 'The Mini will be the backbone of our production in the Longbridge plant, the biggest in the group, for many years to come. Harry Webster, our chief engineer, and his team have many good ideas up their sleeves for keeping the Mini ever fresh in the future.'

The statement alludes to the fact that Issigonis no longer had any real influence on the development of his baby. On the day itself Turnbull added: 'Alec is British Leyland's secret weapon. No one else in the car industry has anyone quite in his class. He is essentially a man of vision, of long term thinking, but always with a revolutionary approach to design problems. We don't care how way out his ideas are. We can soon put them through the commercial mincer.'

Lord Stokes and his new management team, which included Austin Morris's improbably named American sales director Filmer Paradise, were not fans of badge engineering, and so began phasing out some of the multiplicity of marque and model types. In August 1969 the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet ceased production after 59,367 examples. The booted Minis were only produced at a rate of 125 per week with a bodyshell subtlely different to the rest of the range and BLMC had a replacement on the way in the shape of the Clubman. In the Autumn of 1969, production of the Mk3 Mini and Clubman began, but production of the MK 2 range was to continue until the end of the year.

The new bodyshell was substantially re-jigged, and doors with wind up windows and internal hinges were now standard across the range. And the separate marque badges were gone. No more Austin or Morris Mini; it was now Mini in its own right. There was a new upmarket Mini, the Clubman, with a new nose designed by Roy Haynes and his team. The estate now came with a Clubman nose and the 1275GT arrived to replace the 998cc Mini Cooper. The 1275GT was a parts bin special, using Cooper S brake discs and a single carburettor 59bhp 1275cc engine. For the first five years of its life the 1275GT wore 10in Rostye wheels manufactured by Rubery Owen, from which the wheels name was derived. This steel wheel design was very fashionable at the time and featured on several other top selling cars of the era. The Owen family in fact owned the BRM Formula One team. Lord Stokes and Filmer Paradise's loathing for badge engineering must have been justified in sales terms, because the Mini Clubman proved far more popular than the Elf/Hornet they replaced.

With the Mk3 Mini, there seems to have been a conscious effort to reduce the cost of manufacture. Out went Hydrolastic suspension, and a reversion to the rubber cones of 1959-1964. Also gone from the Mini was some of the chrome brightwork, such as upper doortrims and the bumper overriders. Eliminating time consuming activities such as this in the factory seems to have had some effect, as the Mk3s were produced in greater numbers - with the best year being 1971 when 318,475 left Longbridge and overseas plants. Although the Mk3 was announced in October 1969, the only cars to have escape Longbridge before 1970 were for press use only; for the last Austin and Morris Mini Mk2s weren't manufactured until December 1969 - and the last Mk2 Cooper S was completed on the 23rd February 1970.

In late 1969, the Mini K was launched in Australia, fitted with a 51bhp 1098cc engine, the local content of the car was now up to 80 per cent.

If the Mini became one of the iconic symbols of the 1960s, the company that made it came to symbolise the malaise in Britain during the 1970s. Strikes, picket lines and idle men warming their hands outside factory gates over braziers, thwarting the ambitions of the salesman who wanted to sell Britain and its products to the world. But the decision to group all of Britain's independent motor manufacturers under the British Leyland banner was a disaster. The public came to associate British Leyland with strikes, to negative effect.

One of the priorities BLMC had to deal with was the abolition of piece-work and its replacement by measured day work. All its American owned rivals were operating the measured day work system. Everytime a model was modified in any way, piecework rates had to be re-negotiated with the shop stewards. This caused friction and led to many stoppages. The Mini was not immune to this and the change from the ADO15 to ADO20, resulted in production being restricted by disputes. However, on the 21st January 1970, George Turnbull was confident enough to enough to announce that weekly production of the Mini was to increase by another 350 cars.

1970: big changes ahead

The millionth export Mini being handed over by George Turnbull to Gunnar Eik of BLMC Norway during
April 1970...

At the end of February 1970, Lord Stokes revealed that BLMC had not made any profit for four months because of strikes. It was to be a bad year for the British motor industry in general in respect of industrial disputes, with major strikes at Dunlop, Pilkington, GKN-Sankey and Lucas hitting production. There was better news on the 19th April: BLMC announced it planned to expand its production of Minis in Spain and to export from there to the rest of Europe. In cooperation with Nueva Montana Quijano, British Leyland was producing 85 Minis a day in Spain.

The first Spanish made Minis were expected to be exported later that year, and the production rate was to be boosted up to a possible maximum of 400 a day. Discussing the Spanish output of Minis at the opening of the Barcelona Motor Show, Richard Bergeson, managing director of British Leyland, said, 'Last year our European dealers were extremely short of Minis. They could easily have sold thousands more it we had been able to deliver them, but we couldn't.'

George Turnbull warned the 65,000 workers of the Austin Morris group that it was in serious financial trouble later that year. All its models had been inherited from BMC. This was echoed by BLMC's finance and planning director John Barber on November 27th. He said: 'At the moment we are just not earning enough to ensure that we will be competitive in the future, and that would mean contraction, fewer employees and, in the end death.' These were prophetic words by John Barber, and ultimately he was proven right.

1971: the big boom

Despite the disruption, total worldwide Mini production increased to 278,950, but total Longbridge production for all cars in 1969/70 was 280,439, indicating that a lot of the increased Mini production was coming from overseas factories. By April 1971, the Morris Minor was finally withdrawn after a run of 23 years. It was replaced by the Morris Marina, a simple rear wheel drive car, aimed at the profitable company car market. Although later much maligned as a car, as business venture, this apparent technical U-turn by BLMC, was a sales success. By 1973 it was Britain's second best selling car. Such was the state of BLMC's finances in 1968, the development of the Marina had taken priority over the Issigonis 9X.

Also launched the same month was the Fiat 127. That car was powered by a 903cc overhead valve, in conjunction with the state-of-the-art transverse engine and front wheel drive layout which had been pioneered in the Autobianchi Primula and the Fiat 128. The car was the first of the modern superminis, and won praise for its utilisation of space as well as its road-holding. The 127 was an instant success, winning the European Car of the Year award in 1972, quickly becoming one of the best-selling cars in Europe for several years. Later in 1972 a hatchback appeared. The opposition had not been idle and had been doing its market research - Renault came to a similar conclusion, launching the R5 in January 1972. These larger, more expensive hatchbacks proved to be highly successful and BLMC's inability to respond cost them sales.

In July, the last Mk3 Mini Cooper S was produced, and in 2001 the then BLMC boss Lord Stokes retrospectively commented, 'We lost about £20 per Mini. Then people wonder why I scrapped the Cooper. We were giving more money to Mr Cooper than we were making in profit.' In August 1971 the Mini Clubman reached Australia, supplanting the round nosed cars. From now on Australian buyers had a choice from the Mini Clubman GT, which had a 1275 cc engine and the Mini Clubman 1100, which had a locally made 1098cc engine.

Sir Alec Issigonis officially retired from British Leyland in December, but would stay on as a consultant. At a ceremony at Longbridge, George Turnbull said: 'We have had to bend the rules because we do not believe that Sir Alec's extraordinary talents have suddenly waned or dried up... But, I hope perhaps working slightly shorter hours.'

1972

In Australia in April 1972, the Morris branded Minis were now re-badged as Leylands.

Despite its parlous financial state, BLMC managed to find £3m to buy out Innocenti Autoveicoli of Milan in May 1972. Innocenti produced around 700 Minis a week in a country that was second only to Britain in its enthusiasm for the Issigonis design. During the early '70s, the Italian market catered for 55,000 Minis a year. It was imperative that Innocenti did not fall into the hands of a hostile bidder, hence the BLMC buy out. The new managing director of Innocenti was to be Mr Geoffrey Robinson, the corporation's financial controller. He decided to expand Innocenti's exports throughout Europe and created the Mini Cooper 1300, a stylish car fitted with disc brakes and a British built 71bhp 1275cc engine that was in a similar state of tune to that in the 1300GT. This car first appeared in March 1973.

In the autumn of 1972 BLMC at last managed to persuade the Longbridge workforce to accept measured day work in place of piece-work, Cowley had capitulated the previous year. On the 4th October, it was revealed that the Mini was still BLMC's European best-seller, demonstrating, Lord Stokes said, that they were right to keep it as a basic small car. He added: 'No one can improve on its styling. I think it is a dateless car that will go on for many years yet.'

In March 1973, weekly Mini production at Longbridge peaked at 4100. Yet total Mini production at all plants for 1973 was 295,186, and Longbridge production of all models was down to 253,540 in 1972/73. Because of the strike-ridden nature of BLMC's UK plants, trying to analyse these figures is futile. This was the time of the 'Barber Boom' when chancellor of the exchequer in Edward Heath's Conservative government, Anthony Barber, pumped money into the economy. An economic boom ensued when demand for new cars rose. Unfortunately British Leyland's strike prone workforce prevented the company from taking advantage of this.

1973

In May 1973 the ADO16's replacement was announced, the Austin Allegro. In preparation for the Allegro's appearance all the BLMC A-Series front wheel drive car transmissions received a new rod change mechanism. Shortly after the Allegro's launch, former BMC chairman Sir George Harriman died on May 29th 1973. Also in the summer of 1973 BLMC bought out its partner in the Spanish Authi concern, who built Austin Morris cars, including Minis in Pamplona, Spain. BLMC had ambitious plans to expand Authi. In August 1973 Authi began assembling the Mini Cooper 1300, an almost identical car to the Innocenti Mini Cooper 1300 which had been launched the previous March.

BLMC executives started to jump ship, starting with Austin Morris sales director Filmer Paradise, who was replaced by Bernard Bates. Next to go was George Turnbull, who was replaced by Richard Perry in September. As part of the reshuffle caused by resignations, Geoffrey Robinson was posted from Innocenti in Italy to become Jaguar's managing director and chief executive. Events began to move quickly. On the 6th October, the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War began and then Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Qatar unilaterally raised oil prices by 17 per cent to $3.65 per barrel while simultaneously announcing production cuts. The following day, the 17th October, OPEC oil ministers agreed to use oil as a weapon to punish the West for its support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli War.

It was 1956 all over again, and demand for economical small cars soared and the 14 year old Mini was now BLMC's most important car, but could they exploit the situation? Lord Stokes later said: 'Everyone stopped buying expensive cars in order to buy the ruddy Mini again.'

On the 22nd October, John Barber (by now BLMC's deputy chairman and managing director) said in an interview in The Times of the Mini: 'The Mini is a wonderful car though I think insufficient attention was paid during the design stage to the inherent problems of production costs. Even though we have increased the price it is still not a profitable model.' He added that because of the profitable replacement parts business generated by Mini sales it was, 'more in the nature of a break-even operation.'

The article then went on to claim that the Mini improved prospects for the group's dealers by providing them with a more complete range of models. Since it was launched in 1959 Sir Alec Issigonis's pioneering design had introduced standards of roadholding and passenger space for small cars which had been copied by motor manufacturers throughout the world. For the first ten years of its life, it was widely known that the Mini's complicated and expensive engineering prevented it being sold at a profitable price. Since then, however, a number of design changes to simplify suspension and transmission-together with substantial price increases, was generally thought to have given the Mini a small profit margin. Barber added: 'We priced it at what the market could stand. Then, almost as an afterthought, we would cost it and if it showed a loss, we would have to cost it again. BMC should have said "Where do we slot into the market? We’ve got the most sophisticated car in the world. We can afford to charge £100 more than the wretched Ford runabout". Then, having got the Mini into the wrong slot, they did the same with the 1100.'

Although BLMC was later criticised for not instigating a brutal programme of factory closures to rationalise the corporation, behind the scenes the firm had cut down the number of road journeys and distances travelled to transport components from place of manufacture to assembly at Longbridge, a process begun by Joe Edwards in the final days of BMC when Mini production ceased at Cowley.

Later that month, BLMC confirmed that their new financial director was 47 year old Alex Park. 1973 had been a dramatic year for BLMC, when blighted by strikes that prevented it from producing to its existing capacity, it announced massive expansion plans. 1974 Would also prove to be equally dramatic.

1974: The bubble bursts

On the 1st January 1974, the three-day week came into force and was to last until March. It was one of several measures introduced in the United Kingdom by Edward Heath's Conservative Government to conserve electricity, the production of which was severely limited due to industrial action by coal miners. The effect was that commercial users of electricity would be limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. If the world wanted Minis, then BLMC would struggle to produce them, at least in the UK. No such restriction applied to imported cars. And when BLMC was working for its allotted three days it was still afflicted by disputes.

Charles Griffin, by then Austin Morris director of advanced engineering, kicked off the ADO88 at the same time. Unlike the previous ADO74 project, which was designed to use an all-new powertrain, the ADO88 was intended to use the existing A-series engine and transmission to save money. Originally ADO88 was intended as a direct Mini replacement. A snap general election was held on February 28th 1974 and Harold Wilson's Labour party was returned to power, although it did not have an overall majority. The same day British Leyland announced it was selling the Authi company in Spain to General Motors for £26.7m. BLMC felt it could supply Minis to export markets using other factories and it needed the money. Although the GM deal later fell through, it marked the beginning of retrenchment for British Leyland.

The three-day week ended in March 1974 and production was soon back to normal. Later that month, Daniel Richmond of Downton Engineering and former BMC consultant, died. Plagued by strikes, things went from bad to worse at British Leyland. The 1st May brought more bad news: British Leyland's first half year loss turned out to be £16.6m, against a £22.8mn profit for the same period the previous year.

Harry Webster, the 57-year-old technical director of Austin Morris, resigned ar the end of the month. Webster, an engineer of immense standing in the motor industry, was the surviving member of the triumvirate chosen by Lord Stokes in 1968 to run the volume car operations of the newly merged Leyland-BMC empire. There had been persistent rumours in Midland motor industry circles over the previous nine months that he was far from happy with the reduced status of Austin Morris and the departure of George Turnbull. Webster joined Automotive Products. The man chosen to replace Harry Webster, and to oversee future Mini development, or lack of it, was Charles Griffin, who had been the loyal sidekick to both Issigonis and Webster. Griffin's approach to the Mini appears to have been not one of development, but of wholesale replacement with the ADO88.

Unfortunately this took longer than planned to reach fruition. Also at this time, news was seeping out that the mighty Ford Motor Company was planning a new small car. Ford, who had been reluctant to manufacture a model smaller than the Escort because of the low profit margins on small cars, planned to introduce a new model in the Fiat 127/ Renault 5 class in 1976. The small car market was now getting serious. On the 19th June, the last UK built ADO16 was produced, ending a long and successful partnership with the Mini. During this period BLMC engineer and product planner John Bilton investigated the cost penalty of the Mini's 10-inch wheels. He told Jonathan Wood: '...when researching wheels and tyres I found the 12-inch wheel was cheaper than the 10-inch one. It was larger but the tyre was lighter, fundementally you've got less material.'

Twelve inch wheels were used on the ADO16 1100/1300 and Hillman Imp. John Bilton continued: 'Philosophically you can't argue with it but proportionally it would actually have made very little difference to the Mini's interior space. The bit you had given away would have been more than compensated for by using a standard product.'

From the end of 1974 the Mini 1275GT was fitted with 12-inch wheels, but it would be another decade before the rest of the Mini range got them. There were more BLMC corporate moves in August 1974, when Austin Morris managing director Richard Perry was promoted to be replaced by Keith Hopkins (below), the 44 year-old head of British Leyland's public relations department. On the 10th October, there was a second of two UK general elections that year; and this time Harold Wilson's Labour party won a majority of three seats and this would affect the Mini and BLMC, as we shall see.

On the 22nd October 1974, the Innocenti 90/120 hatchback version of the Mini was announced.

The inevitable happened on December 6th 1974, and after much speculation in financial and industry circles, the newly re-elected Labour government announced that it was to take a stake in the British Leyland Motor Corporation and act as guarantor for bank loans to provide working capital to keep the company going. Sir Don Ryder, then a government industry advisor, was asked to produce a report on the future options for BLMC. British Leyland had run out of money, and now there was no hiding it. December 1974 was perhaps the closest it came to a premature axe as its manufacturer became insolvent. Austin Morris had burned through the cash generated by the profitable parts of BLMC such as Rover, Jaguar and Leyland Vehicles, which in turn had starved them of inward investment, and now British Leyland and the Mini was saved from extinction by the taxpayer.

1975

In February 1975 the Mini was Britain's best selling car, and to mark the occasion Austin Morris managing director Keith Hopkins and Sir Alec Issigonis posed with a Mini for a PR photo to celebrate. At the same time BLMC were phasing out the unloved 1800/2200 series, which had sold poorly over the previous decade, only 387,283 were made. Now the only Issigonis cars in production were the Mini and Maxi.

Alec Issigonis and Austin Morris Managing Director, Keith Hopkins, commemorate the Mini being the best-
selling car in the UK in February 1975.

On April 24th 1975 the Ryder report was published and it recomended that:

1: That capital expenditure of £1264m and working capital of £260m (both at constant prices) would have to be provided over the next eight years to make British Leyland viable and fully competitive.
2: That £1400m (based on assumptions of inflation) would be needed from outside sources to achieve a positive cash flow by 1982, and that there was an 'overwhelmingly strong case' for the Government to provide those funds, up to £900m of them by the end of 1978.
3: That British Leyland's operations should be divided into four separate businesses: cars, trucks and buses, special products, and international activities. Each would be a profit centre in its own right with its own managing director.
4: That at corporate level there should be a non-executive chairman and a staff drastically reduced to the absolute minimum.
5: That joint/management/bodies in which shop stewards play a major role; should be set up.
'Means must be found', the report says, 'to take advantage of the ideas. enthusiasm and energy of BL's workers in' planning the future of the business on which their livelihood depends.'
6: That a massive programme to modernize plant and equipment must be started immediately. Much of the group's plant and, machinery was 'old, outdated and inefficient.'
7: That there must be changes in top level management.

The Government accepted Sir Don Ryder's recomendations. The upshot of all this was that BLMC was wound up, its board recomending its sharedholders to accept the governments offer for their shares. During the transition period there was a lot going on in the world of the Mini. At the time, weekly production was said to be 3500, when disputes weren't ongoing. A month long dispute at the Castle Bromwich body pressing plant early in 1975, alone cost 9000 Minis in lost production. On the 28th April, all Mini and most British Leyland production was halted because of a strike at Dunlop, which didn't just make tyres for the BL baby, it made the Alex Moulton designed suspension cones. In early May, British Leyland managed to restart Mini production by obtaining some suspension cones from Innocenti in Milan, Italy. The Dunlop dispute was finally settled in mid May.

Authi produced its last Spanish-built car, a Damask Red Mini, in May 1975. Explaining BLMC's decision to cease manufacturing cars in Spain, one British Leyland executive said: 'We just never reached our target of 50,000 units a year in the national market. Yet in terms of productivity, our operation was comparable to the operations of our competitors and to other operations of our company.'

More news from overseas Mini plants arrived when Leyland-Innocenti, the Italian subsidiary of British Leyland, re-affirmed its will to continue activities in Italy. A spokesman for the company, which employed 5000 workers in Milan, making chiefly Minis, said Leyland-Innocenti planned to keep up production and even expand it for more competitive models on the domestic and foreign markets. Leyland-Innocenti, whose output exceeded 61,000 cars in 1974, had a stock of 8000 unsold cars at the time. The company also announced a board reshuffle. Mr David Andrews, Mr Albert Lawrence and Mr Percy Plant replaced Mr John Barber, Mr Geoffrey Robinson and Lord Stokes as members of the board. Mr Plant was also elected president. Signor Pier Giovanni Bella was reconfirmed as managing director. However in the summer and autumn of 1975, British Leyland became embroiled in an industrial dispute as its Milan workforce protested at plans to make 1500 of its number redundant. By November British Leyland was threatening to close the entire factory and the Italian government became involved.

On the 22nd July, British Leyland sold its Pamplona car assembly plant to SEAT for an agreed price of 1250m pesetas (about £8.8m). The sale included a commitment on the part of SEAT to employ the workers laid off in Pamplona earlier that year when Authi, BLMC's Spanish subsidiary, ended production in Spain. Authi produced about 200,000 BLMC cars in Spain, 140,000 of them Minis. SEAT is now part of the Volkswagen group and the Pamplona plant now manufactures Polos.

The newly named British Leyland Limited now had a new managing director - Alex Park. His predecessor, John Barber, became the Ryder report's scapegoat and was fired. Lord Stokes was given the role of President of British Leyland. British Leyland was re-organised into four seperate divisions, with the Mini now came under the control of Leyland Cars, which oversaw all car activity, from Mini 850 to Jaguar XJ12. The managing director of Leyland Cars was Derek Whittaker, while Keith Hopkins now became sales and marketing director for the whole of British Leyland. Also that month, the Mini Clubman recieved the 1098cc A-Series engine for manual transmission models; the automatics continued to use the 998cc engine. British Leyland also introduced worker participation through new joint decision making bodies. This was industrial democracy in action, an effort to stop the strikes, boost output and turn British Leyland around.

In reality this made decision making painfully slow and enabled shop stewards who had no qualifications in business management to influence events. This is ironic as it was not until 1967 that BMC began recruiting university graduates, and many pundits feel that the recruitment of graduates is what gave rivals Ford the edge over BMC. Now in 1975 control of the destiny of the Mini had shifted from promoted BMC apprentices, BLMC university graduates to shop stewards, many of whom were anti-capitalist in outlook, and there was no business more capitalist than the motor industry, where customer satisfaction was paramount. Unfortunately those shop stewards not on the joint decision making bodies were to make their opinions known through industrial action. The whole concept concept of joint decision making bodies was a sop to the Trade Unions and left wing Labour MPs at a time when many pundits felt Britain was heading in a socialist direction. The concept would not stand the pressures of the free market.

1976: crisis year

The tidily styled Innocenti Mini shows what an Italian styling house can do with a sound British design.
In the context of the early '70s, this was a pretty car, and it would surely have been a big seller had
British Leyland chosen to build it in the UK. (Pic: Ian Nicholls)

The Innocenti saga rumbled on. In November, British Leyland announced it was putting its Italian subsdiary into liquidiation. Back in Britain in December, it was revealed that Leyland Cars' financial position was so bad that capital expenditure for future developments had stopped. British Leyland announced a £123m loss with annual output was down 17 per cent due to strikes and the motor industry recession. The Times reported on December 23rd 1975: 'The exceptional losses of nearly £60m relate largely to closures of manufacturing operations in Australia, Spain and, more recently in the Italian Innocenti business. The Australian closure resulted in a provision of £15.7m in 1973/4, but, despite having sold one factory, British Leyland is making further provisions in Australia, this time of £5.7m. Spanish provisions were originally put at £29m arising from the closure of the Authi business, but following some disposals there, the provision has now been reduced to £19m. Finally, the company faces the Innocenti situation which while still unresolved is going to be costly. Hence, a provision, considered prudent of £34m to cover closure costs in Italy. Included in this total £60m for closures is the cost of making some 16,000 people redundant. The redundancy bill is thought to amount to some £10m.'

Despite the impression given above, Australian Manufacture of the Mini did not cease, although the locally made 1098cc engine was supplanted by the 998cc unit now imported from Britain. In fact the Zetland factory was closed and production transfered to Enfield, New South Wales, which produced its first Mini in early 1975. The Mini may not have been a money maker, but reducing the number of plants that made it was certainly proving costly. In 1975, the hyper-critical CAR magazine tested the Mini 1000 and was not impressed: 'The Mini is an embarrassment. It is painfully out of date in just about every respect except price, but will continue to find adherents regardless; it may not be a good car anymore, but it is a convenient one that the vast majority understand.'

However CAR's veteran columnist LJK Setright was a staunch defender, and later wrote the official Rover 40th anniversary book. So ended 1975. Also in the year Volkswagen had continued the revitalisation of its range following on the successful launch of the Golf in 1974, with the Polo, another entry in the supermini class. Mini production for 1975 was 200,293 compared with 255,336 in 1974. But Authi production had ceased in May 1975 and Innocenti had been strikebound since July and now enduring a workers sit-in, thus explaining much of the drop in output.

There was more news from Milan in April: workers at Innocenti, voted to end a 132-day sit-in at the company's factory there. More than 4000 workers had occupied the factory when British Leyland decided to wind up the company. The plant was to be taken over by the Argentine-born industrialist Alessandro De Tomaso in partnership with the state intervention board CEPI. The vote allowed British Leyland to sell some 8000 cars blocked in the factory. After the sell off, Innocenti managed to assemble some more round nosed Mini's from old stock, bringing the total of Mini's assembled by the company between 1965 to 1976 to around 450,000. Innocenti then concentrated on manufacturing the hatchback 90/120 model, which although based on the same floorpan and using Mini mechanicals, was no longer considered to be a British Leyland car.

British Leyland's inability to supply the market was costing it market share and the Mini was one of the cars in short supply. In May 1976 it received a major update: the interior gained some fittings from the Allegro and Princess and the suspension was modified, with softer rear springs and damper settings, plus new subframe mounts. In June 1976, BL was discussing ambitious plans with shop stewards to make the ADO88 at Longbridge at a rate of 6000 to 7000 a week to make it profitable. The plan was to make Longbridge a one model plant by switching Allegro assembly to Seneffe in Belgium. It was laughably optimistic plan in the light of events to come. By October, Leyland Cars were talking of an annual production target of 250,000 for the ADO88.

The ADO20 bodies were, in 1976, produced in a very inefficient way. Some were assembled at Longbridge from panel pressings brought by lorry from Castle Bromwich, Swindon and Rubery Owen at Darlaston. Others were brought to the 'Body In White' stage, at Castle Bromwich (ready for final painting) while still more were fully painted and trimmed at the same plant. At the time the car was thought to be only marginally profitable. However in an Autocar interview, Leyland Cars boss Derek Whittaker stated that the Mini was 'never better than break even.'

In October, the National Enterprise Board approved the planned £100m programme to develop ADO88, with a 1979 launch target. With its apparent demise on the horizon, one can perhaps understand why British Leyland was reluctant to update the Mini. By December a sense of urgency seemed to have gripped those in government circles to get ADO88 out as soon as possible. The Mini's UK market share had slumped to 6.5 per cent, although strikes and the inablilty to supply the market may have been a factor. Also the Ford Fiesta was due to be launched in the UK and Dagenham was already producing 200 a day. British Leyland's Mini output was not helped by a never ending series of strikes at component suppliers Rubery Owen at Darlaston, who made Mini front subframes and wheels among other things. Despite all the problems, Mini production in 1976 rose slightly to 203,575, with around 160,000 coming from Longbridge. And 1976 was the year in which the four millionth Mini was built.

1977: focus on ADO88

By January 1977, Seneffe was reported to be producing 2000 Allegros and Minis a week, with probably the smaller car in the majority, after all continental buyers seemed to prefer the Volkswagen Golf to the Allegro. Seneffe began producing the Mini Special for sale on the continent from 1977 to the end of production in 1981. This was a round nosed Mini fitted with a 1098cc engine and production amounted to 73,753 cars. Unfortunately strikes by key workers at the Castle Bromwich body plant brought the Mini lines and British Leyland to a standstill, and by the middle of February 1977 25,000 workers were laid off. Other disputes broke out, including Mini engine assemblers and then the tool-makers struck. By the middle of March the number of workers laid off had reached 46,000. The disputes, which had cost British Leyland £12m a day in lost production of all models, was over by March 21st 1977, but its effect had been catastrophic. So how was the Mini faring in the marketplace in the spring of 1977?

The then 18-year Mini was still capable of taking 6 to 7 per cent of the United Kingdom market when it was freely available, a position dealers had not enjoyed for some time because of strikes. Despite the month long tool-makers' dispute which savagely interrupted production of most Leyland Cars models, the Mini still managed to outsell the new Ford Fiesta in March 1977. Mr Peter Green, chairman of PJ Evans, Leyland Cars biggest distributors in the Midlands, said at the time: 'We can still sell all the Minis we can get. We must have something in the future to enable us to continue to meet this strong demand.'

Incredible as it seems today, the Mini was quite an unloved little car by the late 1970s, thanks to the
arrival of smart superminis, such as the Renault 5 and Ford Fiesta. This 1977 cartoon sums up the mood
of the moment perfectly...

Dealers insisted that the Mini underpinned the whole Leyland Cars range by bringing in first-time buyers who frequently stayed loyal to Leyland Cars when they progressed to larger cars. It also enabled two- and three-car families to purchase, and service their cars through a single dealership. Dealers were also anxious to cater for the significant Buy British brigade. In early 1977, Leyland Cars finance director Colin Daniels instigated new accounting methods, and it was found that in Britain the Mini was actually making a modest profit; but losing money on exports - and overall the car was a loss maker.

The virtual shutdown of Leyland Cars in the spring of 1977, due to strikes, resulted in a rethink about the company's future. However, the alternative of liquidating Leyland Cars, was too horrific to contemplate to the Labour government. The April sales figures did not make good reading for Leyland Cars: Ford occupied the first four places, with the Fiesta in third place with 4942 sales. The Mini was in eighth place with 3524; even the Capri outsold the Mini that month. Things had got so bad that the NEB tried to persuade George Turnbull, now a highly paid international automotive executive, to return to Britain. In the first six months of 1977, there had been 304 disputes in Leyland Cars which had led to the loss of 9,086,000 man hours and a vehicle production loss of 117,394.

In July 1977 Leyland Cars responded to the threat posed by the Ford Fiesta by giving the Mini 850 and 1000 a matt black grille. Further disaster engulfed British Leyland in October 1977, when a recording of chairman Sir Richard Dobson, allegedly making racist remarks at a private function, surfaced in the media. A media furore followed, and he promptly resigned. In fact, the NEB had already lined up Michael Edwardes to replace him - He started work as chairman on the 1st November.

1978: reorganization

By the following January, Michael Edwardes had decided to produce two versions of the Mini, side by side at Longbridge; the old ADO20, and a larger version of its proposed replacement, the ADO88, which would later become the Austin Metro. It represented a victory for the considerable body of opinion within Leyland Cars which had long advocated the two model approach. It argued that the new generation small cars, the Fiat 127, Renault 5, VW Polo and Ford Fiesta, were so much alike that they had given a new lease of life to the then 18-year-old Mini. All were some 18in longer than the existing Mini, and so similar in appearance, that the Mini was gaining a certain cachet as something different. Certainly, it had outsold. the new Fiesta by two to one, taking 5 per cent of the British market in 1977, despite all the restrictions on production.

Opponents, now supported by Michael Edwardes, insisted that it would fall between two stools and lose its image. This view was vindicated by the results of a clinic, a secret viewing of the prototype ADO88 displayed alongside its rivals; Motorists were critical of several aspects including appearance and size. The decision to go for the larger LC8 version meant a complete re-skin, which would delay the car until 1980. Much of the existing research and development work on engines, gear boxes, transmissions and suspension, however could be carried forward to the new model.

However, Derek Whittaker was unhappy with the way things were going, and promptly resigned - shortly to be followed by Keith Hopkins. Edwardes decided to rename Leyland Cars as BL Ltd, which was in effect an umbrella organization in control of three subsiduaries: Austin Morris Ltd, Jaguar-Rover-Triumph and BL Components. The Mini fell under Austin Morris Ltd, and its new managing director, Ray Horrocks.

By the spring of 1978, economic conditions had improved and new car sales were booming. On May 13th 1978 British Leyland revealed it was preparing to follow its rivals, Ford, Chrysler and Vauxhall, and import more cars from the Continent to meet the demands of the best home market for five years. News of plans to bring in about 10,000 Minis from its assembly plant at Seneffe, Belgium, had already brought protests from some shop stewards at Longbridge.

Management countered by saying that the alternative was to sit on the sidelines, while the competition took full advantage of the boom. It had emphasized that Ford, by importing one in three of all its UK sales from plants in Germany, Belgium and Spain, took 30 per cent of the market the previous month compared with BL's. Shop stewards' concern stemmed from the fact that BL only recently closed one of the three Mini assembly lines at Longbridge, a move intended to increase productivity and reduce costs. Production on the remaining two was not yet reaching targets, largely because some workers resented the recent closure and re-manning assignments. Shop stewards were assured that if Longbridge production improved quickly, Seneffe imports would be reduced. But BL had to act quickly if it was not to miss the summer selling season. And with the Mini still among BLs best-selling models, it had to be available.

A spokesman for BL Cars said: 'We are optimistic that employees at Longbridge will accept that our objective is not to "do" them out of jobs but to take full advantage of the very high sales expected. Our American, European and Japanese rivals are building stocks almost daily by bringing in imports. We are only proposing to bring in cars, 75 per cent of which are manufactured in our United Kingdom factories.'

On the 25th August, BL announced it was to close its truck assembly plant in Melbourne, Australia, and stop Mini production in Australia, due to declining sales. Only that month Leyland Australia had announced the Mini 1275 LS and it would become a very rare car. The closure of the plant at Enfield, New South Wales in October 1978, would make 120 workers redundant - the Australian plant had ultimately produced 176,284 Minis. This was followed by an announcement on November 15th 1978 that output of Minis at Seneffe was being reduced by 30 per cent. Also in 1978 Charles Griffin retired, to be replaced by Ray Bates, an ex-Triumph man.

1979: Mini hits 20 not out...

Happy 20th birthday, Mini.

1979 was the 20th anniversary of the Mini, and Sir Alec Issigonis briefly returned to the limelight. To celebrate, Austin-Morris unveilled the Longbridge-built limited edition Mini 1100 Special; a round nosed Mini fitted with the 1098cc engine, wide 10in Exacton alloys and plastic wheelarch extensions. In July that year, the Mini 850 was rebranded the Mini City. Sadly, in its last year as BL's sole small car, only 165,502 were built, and that was more than the total output of Longbridge, which produced a total of 127,687 cars. Seneffe was obviously providing many customers with their Minis that year, although UK sales held up remarkably well at 82,938, the best since 1975. Later that year, Longbridge became the scene of the confrontation between senior BL management and the unions over the decision to sack the plant's senior shop steward Derek Robinson. Although the management ultimately prevailled, the whole Robinson affair was strangely reminiscent of the dismissal of Frank Horsman at Cowley on the eve of the Mini's launch in 1959.

So ended the 1970s, which in spite of all the industrial misery, economic and political turmoil and lack of development was the Mini's most successful decade, with 2,438,187 manufactured.

The 1980s: retirement ahead?

As Edwardes and his team successfully reduced the number of stoppages, the Mini and the company that made it became less newsworthy. In late March 1980 there was a two-day strike by 30 trim shop workers who complained that new sound-deadening material being fitted to the roof of the Mini was causing skin rashes. The management promised further safety checks. This was part of a new sound deadening pack for the Mini announced in May 1980.

Also in March 1980, Jaguar took control of the Castle Bromwich body pressing plant, which meant future Mini bodyshells would now come from the former Pressed Steel plant at Stratton St Margaret, Swindon. Jaguar technical director Bob Knight had claimed that only 40 per cent of bodyshells for the Coventry concern were satisfactory and had to be rectified in-house. In that case, what was the quality of Mini bodyshells like and did Longbridge do anything about below par examples?

By June 1980, BL's UK market share was down to 13 per cent; a dreadful figure revealing that the company's brand values were at rock bottom. In August 1980, in preparation for the launch of the Metro, Austin-Morris began to thin out the Mini range: the Clubman saloon and 1275GT were phased out; the Clubman Estate carried on, now with a 998cc engine and renamed Mini 1000 HL Estate; also ceasing production that month was the Mini City/850, which was replaced by a new Mini City with a 998cc A-Plus engine, as would be found in the Metro.

On the 8th October 1980, the miniMetro was launched to a media blitz. All of a sudden, the Mini became yesterday's car, like the Austin A35 in 1959. Yet, the Mini had fought a magnificent rearguard action against the newer generation of superminis, remaining ahead of the Fiesta right through until until 1980. The Metro is credited with saving BL, but if Mini sales had not held up so well, the knockout blow would have been delivered long before its launch. The brand values of the Issigonis baby had sustained sales, while those of more modern BL cars had gone into meltdown.

Britain soon contracted Metro-mania, and the new hatchback was at 8 per cent of the UK car market, and Mini production at Longbridge was down to 1150 per week. The Mini's future seemed to be as a budget car, competing with equally venerable cars like the Citroen 2CV, Renault 4 and Fiat 126. Moke production began in Portugal that year using CKD kits imported from Australia. By By the end of 1980, total Mini production had reached 4,749,816. Total Mini production for 1980 was 150,067.

Seneffe: the final showdown

Seneffe closed in 1981 with the loss of 2200 jobs

There was one more big drama left in the Mini story. On January 28th 1981, BL confirmed that it was closing Seneffe with the loss of 2200 jobs. A further 225 workers at Cowley, near Oxford, who packed kits for the Belgian plant were also to be made redundant. There was considerable bitterness in Belgium over the Seneffe closure, and anti-British feeling was running high among the workers there; some of whom had occupied the plant. The Seneffe closure in March, had been under consideration for months, as the BL board formulated its plan for further retrenchment, and the concentration of car assembly in the Britain. The Belgian plant was said to have made a loss of 55m francs (£688,000) in 1978, and 132m francs (£1.65m) in 1979. Losses for 1980 were expected to be considerably higher. The decision to close Seneffe caused friction between Britain and Belgium at the highest level. Sir Peter Wakefield, the British ambassador to Belgium, was summoned to the Belgian Prime Minister's office that morning and asked to deliver a message to Margaret Thatcher. This was understood to state that it would be 'desirable' if the closure decision could be delayed for at least a month. Mr Wilfred Martens's message stressed the Seneffe plant's good productivity record, its strike-free labour relations over 17 years, and the drastic impact the closure would have on an already depressed region, where up to a third of the work force were without jobs.

Over 2000 workers at Seneffe continued to occupy the factory, and voted to block the departure of completed vehicles and parts from the works and from BL's adjoining European distribution centre. Their aim was to impound the 3500 new cars in the centre as a bargaining counter to obtain maximum redundancy payments. Angry union leaders accused BL of foul play over its decision to close the plant, and there was no mistaking the bitterness felt towards BL's management, Mrs Thatcher's Government, and all things British. One can't help but feel sorry for the Seneffe workforce. They had performed magnificently and had supplied Europe with Minis when strikebound UK factories couldn't and their reward was redundancy. For them, the closure represented a betrayal. In the 17-year history of the plant, productivity had risen steadily and there had never been a strike. And all this was going on while BL was locked in yet another battle with the Longbridge shop stewards.

Also in 1981 BL had to find alternate suppliers of front subframes and wheels for the Mini when Rubery Owen closed their Darlaston factory. Fortunately supplies of rear subframes were unaffected as they were supplied by GKN-Sankey.

Over at Nuova Innocenti, and as a consequence of Alessandro de Tomaso's conclusion of an agreement with Daihatsu, the Japanese company would supply Innocenti with 2000 three-cylinder engines per month, starting at the end of 1981. The original Innocenti 90 and 120 had been joined by the 74 bhp 1275cc engined Mini De Tomaso, as the top of the range model - and Innocenti had managed to sell 220,000 of these cars.

Signor de Tomaso told a Milan newspaper: 'As for the possibility which has been ventilated of not renewing the British Leyland-Innocenti agreement, I can declare that it is a case of pure invention, based on not knowing the facts. It is enough to consider that, of the 103,000 Minis sold in Europe, 42,000 are built by Innocenti. How can a manufacturer give up 42 per cent of his sales with an easy heart? Certainly, the Innocenti-Daihatsu agreement has annoyed Leyland, also because I kept it secret up to the last.' The Daihatsu engined Mini 3 arrived in April 1982 and lasted in production until 1993.

In February 1982, the last Mini estate HL bodyshell was produced; although the model would not officially be withdrawn from sale until September 1982. In April 1982 the Mini was given higher gearing to make it more economical, but this did nothing for acceleration, and the car lost a little of its buzz box characteristics. The fact that the ancient A-series engine could cope with upgearing was a tribute to its remarkable torque charcteristics, even in its tamest form.

The Mini returns to Japan

Then, in May after a gap of almost 20 years, BL relaunched the Mini in Japan; where the car had recently been enjoying a revival of interest on the second hand market. The car was equipped with what BL described as cosmetic refinements, such as head restraints and flared wheel arches. The 998cc Minis carried a price tag 10-15 per cent higher than in Britain, where prices ranged from £2999 to £3363. In 1981, BL sold about 1000 cars in Japan. Minis were first exported to Japan in the early 1970s, but BL withdrew them from the market as Japanese legal requirements on imported vehicles became more stringent. The Japanese promised to make their markets more accessible, following increasing pressure particularly from Europe, and the Mini now had a greater chance of success. The Japanese Minis were prepared by Carbodies, and were fitted with catalytic exhaust converters to conform with Japanese emission rules. This was the start of a new market for the Mini, as a fun car and fashion accessory.

Also, there were more corporate changes as Austin-Morris morphed into the Austin Rover Group, under Harold Musgrove. In September, the Mini Mayfair was launched as the upmarket model in the range complete with Rashelle cloth trim. The owner was well advised to go for the optional Exacton alloy wheels and wheelarch extensions, for they suited the appearance of the car. The Mayfair proved a success, and in November 1982, weekly Mini production rose from 940 to 1050. Although Mini production would decline, the trick for BL was to try and sell as many of the higher priced models such as the Mayfair as it could.

On the 5th November, Sir Michael Edwardes left BL, having drastically cut back on plants and jobs, faced down the shop stewards and won in many confrontations. He was replaced by Sir Austin Bide.

Mini at 25 - the silver cars proved popular (without door graphics).

Mini Van and Pick Up production ceased in May 1983, after 579,673 examples. In preparation for the Mini's 25th anniversary that August, Austin Rover unveilled the Mini 25. This had robbed the BL parts bin and saw the return of the 1275GT's 8.4in front disc brakes and 12in wheels. Shortly afterwards, this became standard fitment for mainstream Minis, over a decade after BL had first realised that this was cheaper than fitting 10in wheels.

Trying and failing to replace the Mini

There were two very real opportunities to replace the Mini during its life, the first being in 1968. Alec Issigonis, working in semi-retirement, had readied the 9X to replace the Mini, a car that was smaller than his original, but was easier and cheaper to build, arguably more stylish and, amazingly, was more commodious, also incorporating a hatchback rear door. The company never seriously investigated the feasibility of producing this car – by 1968 BMH were deeply embroiled in the merger saga with Leyland Motors and the question of what to do with the poor-selling mid-range cars was far more urgent than the matter of replacing the Mini. In fact, replacing the Mini was seen as a distraction, rather than an essential task to be undertaken. It was easy to point to the Mini and note that it still sold in large numbers at the time, but its non-development also showed a lack of forward planning by the new company’s management.

The non-appearance of the 9X is definitely the saddest of all the missed opportunities in this whole story: had it appeared on the market sometime around 1971-72, it would not only have refined – and redefined – the Mini, but would also have challenged the idea that the supermini should be quite as large as it ended up being by the mid-Seventies. In addition, it may well have ultimately had a wider market appeal, but it is certain that the 9X would have been more profitable for the company, as it was cheaper to build. What makes this whole episode all the sadder was that this car was fully engineered by Issigonis and production-ready, all development having been completed.

ADO74 and ADO88 notwithstanding, the other real opportunity to replace the Mini came in 1974 and would have potentially been a very inexpensive and effective operation. During the '60s, one successful deal that BMC concluded was with the Innocenti company in Italy, who agreed terms to build the Mini and ADO16 for European consumption and become a subsidiary of the expanding British car maker. The Innocenti agreement was highly effective and made a fair amount of money for BMC, but by the early Seventies, the Italian management approached Bertone to restyle the car in response to the threat from the new wave of hatchbacks, such as the Fiat 127. The Innocenti Mini 90/120 were the result; a smart and pert small range of hatchbacks, the success of which led to the Argentinian industrialist and supercar producer Alejandro de Tomaso buying the company from British Leyland when they were at a particularly low ebb in the mid-1970s.

It is not inconceivable that BL could have also arranged terms with Bertone to use this body in the UK themselves, building it on a much larger scale and thereby producing a stylish (and cheap) supermini for the Seventies. In fact, British Leyland did consider producing a version of the Innocenti Mini themselves, because it was modern and at 10ft 3ins was only marginally longer than the original Mini. Harris Mann has since stated that this idea was quickly rejected because Charles Griffin had made it quite clear in 1974 that any replacement for the Mini should be larger inside, and the Bertone design clearly was not. Initial planning had also shown that the Innocenti Mini would prove costly to manufacture – even a run of 5000 a year would not have made financial sense – although these problems could possibly have been overcome. Archives show that Harry Webster was thinking very much along these lines, with his re-bodied Mini styled by Michelotti.

Good times, and bad...

Of course, it must noted that back in the late 1960s and early '70s, the Mini was not regarded with quite the same fondness as it would be in later years, so the time would have been right to make the change and move the original concept forwards. Of course, the company was in a perpetual state of crisis between 1968 and 1980 and as such, did not seriously have the inclination to replace a car that was selling in large numbers. The major crises lay in the mid-range with cars such as the Maxi and Allegro and so, as time passed and the Mini remained in production unaltered, it ceased to be simply an old and inadequate car, and ended up becoming a lovable anachronism that was cherished by people of all ages.

In fact, the Mini’s best year for sales was 1971 (12 years into its life, remember) when 318,475 were built and amazingly, in 1973 it became British Leyland’s best selling car – and would remain so until the launch of the Metro in 1980. The only BL car that could rival the Mini for sales was the Morris Marina, but as that car was designed to compete in the unique to Britain fleet market, unlike the Mini it had little appeal to export markets.

This probably says more about the weakness of the cars in the company’s mid-range line-up than it does about the strength of the Mini, but ironically, as the Seventies rolled on, the need to replace the Mini became less and less pressing, as it continued to bolster the sales of the company as a whole. The situation was compounded by the fact that as British Leyland worked on its ADO74 Mini replacement, grappling blindly with the task of replacing the elderly car, the money ran out and the project was scrapped so that it could concentrate on the ADO88.

Enter the Metro... and the Mini's revival

Funnily enough, the emergence of the Metro in 1980 as the new de facto supermini for the company also safeguarded the future of the Mini. Production volumes for the Mini took a fall as people took to the Metro as the new, small BL car, but as Longbridge had been pretty much gutted in a massive modernisation programme in preparation for Metro production, the Mini was also a beneficiary. The Mini continued to roll off the same production line as its bigger brother and benefited from the economies of scale afforded by the new facilities. The 1980 launch of the Metro also marked the point in time when the Mini actually started making real money for the company with its fresh, new A-Plus engine and rationalised range.

Life was quiet for the Mini during the Musgrove years at BL, and as the company became known as Austin-Rover and new cars came on stream such as the, Maestro, Montego and Rover 200, the Mini tended to be quietly forgotten. Harold Musgrove intended for the Mini to finish in 1986-87. According to Simon Weakley, a marketing trainee at Austin Rover between 1982 and 1986, the Austin AR6 would be the reason. He said: 'The AR6 was to be the only car to carry the Austin name, with the Mini set to be discontinued at its launch.'

Business reasoning went completely against the Mini as well, meaning that there should have been no rational reason for continuing its production. One insider put Austin Rover’s dilemma in context: 'it should be realised that there were lots of reasons why Engineers and Manufacturing people wanted to axe it - it was a 1950s design, lots of difficulties with modern legislation, a pig to manufacture - it was responsible for dragging down the productivity figures of Longbridge, and so on. Musgrove always took the view that it was taking volume away from Metro, too.'

The Metro quite clearly impacted on UK sales of the Mini, and annual production of the car was now down some 100,000 units, despite claims to the contrary by Austin Rover. Sadly, a long hard look at the statistics suggest that most UK Metro sales were not conquests from rival manufacturers but to former Mini owners. This may have aided Austin Rover's finances as the Metro was more profitable, but it did nothing for the groups market share and the need to wean buyers away from rival small car brands, in particular the Mk2 Ford Fiesta which in 1984 overhauled the Metro to become Britain's best selling small car. Back in 1978 when the decision was taken to build both the LC8 Metro and retain the ADO20, did BL management really expect Mini sales to collapse as much as they did? In August 1985 Austin Rover was forced to cut back Metro production as a result of the harsh trading conditions then existing in the now overcrowded small car market.

It was during the mid-1980s that a face from the Mini's past, John Cooper, approached Austin Rover with a proposal to resurrect the Mini Cooper by fitting the MG Metro engine. He was rebuffed by Harold Musgrove, who probably saw such a concept as likely to harm sales of the more profitable MG Metro. However, John Cooper was not to be defeated and began selling tuning kits for 998cc Minis that were exported to Japan.

Events conspired against Harold Musgrove. While the public took to the first generation Rover 200, the Maestro and Montego struggled against Ford and Vauxhall opposition and in 1985/86 the BL recovery plan stalled badly. The government, who sought to privatise BL, promptly took action by firing chairman Sir Austin Bide. In his place was appointed Canadian businessman Graham Day. Shortly after the launch of the Rover 800 in 1986, Harold Musgrove resigned, and Graham Day took over the running of Austin Rover personally. With Graham Day in charge of things the death of the Mini was put on ice in the light of some interesting new market research results. It was during 1986 that the five millionth Mini left the production line. The date was the 19 February 1986, and the star guest Austin Rover had in attendance was Noel Edmonds...

Rebranding the legend

During 1985 and into 1986, Harold Musgrove’s marketing department had spent a great deal of time and money on a massive market research programme into the car-buying public’s perception of the company and its products. When the research was concluded, Graham Day and his canny band of marketing experts seized upon the results with great vigour and found that the wider public held the mistaken belief that the Mini was not in production any more. Those who did know that it was still a production model regarded the Mini with great fondness and warmth. These new findings directly affected Graham Day’s model policy and meant that the humble Mini was granted a stay of execution until at least 1991.

The Metro had now lost its sales appeal which resulted in reduced production and the ability to compete on price with rival superminis. To try and fill the void, the ARG marketing machine would turn to the Mini and exploit its niche brand values and use it to appeal to buyers who would rather have something more individulistic on their driveway than the latest bland, bottom of the range eurobox.

What happened next in the story of the Mini was quite remarkable. For the first time since 1980, adverts actually started appearing in the press for the car, headed by the saccharin-coated, 'Minis Have Feelings Too' Christmas campaign at the end of 1986, resulting in a rally in sales. After this, many and varied special editions, such as the Mary Quant 'Designer' model and the 'Italian Job' versions – available in red, white and blue – started to appear, no doubt capitalising on the car’s '60s appeal. John Cooper was invited back on board, and from May 1989 his performance kit was available as an optional extra on 998cc Minis.

By now Austin Rover had become Rover Cars as part of Graham Day's upmarket aspirations, and the group had been privatised through its sale to British Aerospace. Graham Day had promoted George Simpson, a Scottish accountant who had joined BLMC back in 1969, as managing director of Rover Cars. The Mini was now officially a Rover.

Sadly on the 2nd October 1988, Sir Alec Issigonis died. He was 81 years old. Then in July 1989 Moke production in Portugal was halted by Rover cars, although it was to be temporary.

A sign of the renewed marketing impetus being put behind the Mini was the campaign to mark the 30th anniversary of the car in 1989. A 40-second TV commercial was aired, directed by photographer David Bailey and featuring model/actress Twiggy which shamelessly harked back to the cars sixties heyday using monochrome film clips and Thunderclap Newman's 1969 hit Something In The Air as its musical soundtrack. It was all marvellously nostalgic and used to sell the anniversary limited edition Mini 30, which only appeared on a poster in the commercial, with the tag line, 'You never forget your first Mini'. This seemed to mark the end of the era of marketing the Mini as a budget car, and now the emphasis would be on nostalgia, for the Mini was now a classic car still in production.

The 1990s: Cooper comeback

1991 Mini Cooper S poses alongside a replica of the Sixties Cooper-S rally car. Rover boosted Mini sales
significantly by resurrecting the Cooper name and before too long, the Cooper was outselling the standard
version. It is not an exaggeration to say that the decision by management to re-create the Mini Cooper
was an inspired move and helped to ensure the survival of the Mini into the twenty-first century. The Mini
revival also led to the investment of huge amounts of BMW money into the creation of a replacement for
the car – though whether MINI version 2001 is in the spirit of the original is debatable.

In July 1990, the Mini Cooper limited edition was launched. The authorisation for the new generation sporty Mini was given in January 1990, and the limited edition RSP (Rover Special Products) Cooper was a last minute addition to the marketing plan. Mechanical development was farmed out to ERA at Dunstable and the first of the 1990's Mini Coopers was built between 27 April to 3 May 1990. At this time, Rover was on a roll, with the acclaimed R8 second generation 200, and working flat out to satisfy demand. Graham Day's vision of turning Rover into a niche manufacturer seemed to be coming true, and the new Mini Cooper was part of that strategy. Featuring a catalysed 1275cc MG Metro engine, the limited run quickly sold out and a mainstream Mini Cooper was introduced the following September. It made a reappearance in a response to the sales of Cooper kits in Japan and also the management’s knowledge that the Mini was now a very real asset to the range which would sell in big numbers, especially overseas.

In 1990 Longbridge produced 46,045 Minis, of which only 10,067 were sold in the UK. Japan took 12,087, France 8977, Germany 4790 and Italy 2680. Even after the original enthusiasm for the Cooper had waned, Japan still took 8508 Minis in 1993. These were major car markets and the Mini could be used to generate showroom traffic for the new generation of Rover cars. Also in 1990, the original A-Series Metro ceased production to be replaced by the K-series powered R6 Metro/100. The base 1.3-litre Maestro was now the only other Rover to use the A-series engine, and there were major differences between them. Rover had now moved on at last from powertrains designed in the BMC era.

Aside from the changes to the Mini Cooper range, which are dealt with in that car's development story, the major change to the standard Mini was the phasing out of the 998cc version in May 1992. A detuned 1275cc engine provided the car's motive power from now on. The base model was now called a Sprite, in honour of another past BMC car, while the Mayfair continued as the higher spec model.

During the 1990s, Mini enthusiasts started to get together to form clubs for social activities involving their favourite car. This thriving scene became worldwide, with Germany, home of so many outstandingly successful cars, including BMW, emerging as one of the most enthusiastic nations in their devotion to the Mini. The Mini became a symbol of Britain, a Britain that perhaps no longer exists, or never existed? And at the same time it has managed to have an international appeal. In April 1991, Portuguese Moke manufacture resumed after the rights had been sold to Italian firm Cagiva. However production halted again in late 1993 and the rights for the Moke now reside in China where bodshell manufacture has now resumed.

Enter BMW

This re-emergence of the Mini continued unabated and when BMW took the reins of the company in 1994, some very real money was thrown at the Mini in order to maintain its compliance with toughening European noise and emission laws. The idea was that the company could keep the Mini in production as long as they needed to because one of the first decisions about future model plans made by BMW boss Bernd Pischetsrieder, who was in fact a relative of Sir Alec Issigonis, was to produce a replacement for the Mini. Mini along with Land Rover was one of the few brands that survived the British Leyland abyss untarnished. If BMW could develop a new Mini with the characteristics that appealed to drivers of the Issigonis car, then they could have a winner on their hands in a growing sector of the market.

By this time annual Mini production had slumped to around 20,000 and contined to decline. The nostalgia appeal of the car that had boosted sales in 1989/90 had clearly subsided. When BMW took over Rover, it was being run by John Towers, who left in 1996, a year when Mini production declined further to 15,638. Clearly post 1994 the Mini was living on borrowed time and was kept in production by BMW who wanted a seamless transition from the classic Mini to their new MINI. The car was now bought by diehard enthusiasts who accepted the cars faults from the outset. Being a 1959 design it could not compete with more modern designs in areas such as resistance to corrosion and reliability.

In October 1996, the final version of the Mini emerged, known as the Mk7 - with a front mounted radiator, airbag, even higher gearing, a long option list and optional 13in wheels. All the Minis now had identical tune 63bhp twin point injection engines. Between then and the end of production the Rover Group went through yet another series of traumas culminating in the sale by BMW to Phoenix Venture Holdings in spring 2000, and John Towers returned as boss. The reasons for Rover's decline are myriad, and the media cited the strength of sterling as the prime cause, but rumours circulating in the motor trade that the K-series engine was less than robust cannot have helped sale to fleet buyers. Engines like the Rover V8 and the A-series may have been old fashioned, but at least they were bulletproof.

Ironically the Mini outlasted the car originally intended to replace it, the Metro, now named the Rover 100, which ceased production on 23 December 1997. In 1997 Metro/100 production ammounted to 40,199 cars, while that of the Mini was 16,938. Although BMW had hiked up the Mini's price, one can't see how they were making money from the car with such low volumes.

The end for the Mini finally came on 4 October 2000. The media and various personalities gathered at Longbridge to see the end of the road for Issigonis's baby. Also attending were surviving members of Alec Issigonis's team. To the Quincy Jones composed soundtrack of the film The Italian Job, the final Mini was driven off the production line in CAB1 by production line supervisor Geoff Powell with singer Lulu in the passenger seat after a production run of 41 years.

The end of Mini production effectively meant the end of CAB1, for despite all the hopes expressed for the future of Longbridge in 2000, the hoped for demand for MG Rover cars failed to materialise, and the building remained empty. The last of 5,378,776 Minis now resides at the British Motor Heritage museum at Gaydon.

In conclusion

So why was the Mini so successful? What was it about the car that enabled it to survive 41 years in production? Why is there such a thriving enthusiasm for a crude and archaic car? Perhaps the answer lies behind the wheel of the car. To put it simply, the Mini is fun to drive and it offers sports car handling in a budget car, and not everybody can afford a supercar.

In terms of the motor industry, the Mini had absolutely enormous repercussions. For the first time in history here was a revolutionary car that BMC could produce, that owed nothing to the designs and ideas of others. In fact, the idea was copied far and wide by all companies that had an interest in producing small, economical cars. The first company to adopt the idea was FIAT, who in 1964 launched the Autobianchi Primula. Like the Mini, the Primula was front-wheel-drive and transverse-engined, but differed from it in one very important respect: the gearbox was attached to the end of the engine, not unlike the experimental Morris Minor replacement that Issigonis was working on in 1952. Dante Giacosa chose this transmission package because he viewed BMC’s gearbox-in-sump arrangement as being unnecessarily complex and expensive to produce. It should, however, be noted that the Autobianchi Primula was somewhat larger than the Mini.

Subsequently, all small cars (with the exception of some Peugeots) have followed the FIAT formula of the transverse-engined, end-on gearbox package, but this does not devalue the genius of Alec Issigonis and his team: in simple terms, Leonard Lord and Alec Issigonis redefined the small car package as they wished it to be, and in doing so, altered the fundamental design of the compact car in much the same way as Henry Ford or Ferry Porsche had altered the concept of car manufacture.

The last Mini comes off the line in October 2000... (Picture: Ian Nicholls)

A case of limited development

Park a Mini of 1959 next to a Mini of 1999 and you would not see a radically different car, but you would see one that had been the subject of significant and ongoing development:

1960	Range expanded to incorporate estate versions.
1961	The first Mini-Coopers appeared. Riley and Wolseley booted versions introduced. introduction of Porsche Baulk ring Synchro.
1964	Hydrolastic suspension incorporated, and then dropped in 1969.
1966	Wind-up side windows incorporated on Riley/Wolseley models.
1968	Synchromesh replaced and gear-change improved by having synchro on first gear.
1969	Clubman version added, incorporating Maxi-like front-end styling. Wind-up windows incorporated on the rest of the range.
1971	1275GT Clubman-based model now the only sporting version after the Cooper S is discontinued.
1973	Dynamo replaced by alternator for the electrical system.
1976	Rubber mounting for the front subframe, to improve driveline “snatchiness”.
1980	A-Plus engine added, cars now built on Metro production line, Clubmans dropped.
1984	Wheel diameter increased to 12" in order to accomodate larger brakes.
1987	Special editions start to appear thick and fast.
1990	Cooper re-introduced.
1992	Lamm convertible version launched, Longbridge versions appear in '93.
2000	Production halted.
2001	MINI launched, but is it the car the British would have produced?

Feedback:

Thanks to Ian Nicholls for his contributions to this story.
Proofed by Declan Berridge

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Related pages: · Supermini projects · Innocenti Mini · Issigonis interview · Formation of an empire: BMC is created · New MINI development story · Mini: Wizardry on wheels or business blunder? · Mini: The world's favourite small car? · The two millionth Mini
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